


Empire of Dirt

by becausenobreeches (crucibulis)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Era, Crying, Heartbreaking, Lost Love, Lyrium Addiction, Mirror Universe, Multi, No Smut, Sibling Bonding, Time Shenanigans, individual chapters will be tagged with warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-14 16:39:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3417947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crucibulis/pseuds/becausenobreeches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nora Trevelyan tries to use the anchor to escape the Fade at Adamant, she finds herself in a version of the world where her younger brother is the Inquisitor. No one in the Inquisition knows who she is. Not even her beloved, Cullen. </p><p>(Mostly Cullen/F!Inquisitor, some minor Dorian/M!Inquisitor.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I hurt myself today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for this chapter: POV character breaks a bone

“We need to clear a path!”

“Go… I’ll cover you…”

“No. You were right. The Grey Wardens caused this. A Warden must--”

“A Warden must help them rebuild. That’s your job. Corypheus is mine!”

They were so close. Nora could see a glimmer of the real world on the other side of the rift, an odd fold in the fabric of the fade, like a partially opened curtain with no window or wall. And blocking the way, the monster loomed above them, an impossible number of teeth and eyes and limbs, and she had exactly no time to make the decision. These two men were both willing to give their lives to save her and the other, and didn’t that mean Thedas needed them both? Didn't that mean they both deserved to live?

They were so close. She wasn't going to leave anyone behind.

“Fuck that,” she declared with a hollow chuckle, and raised one glowing green palm towards the beast, reaching to the mage behind her with her other hand. Surely this beast was no match for two of the most famous mages in the world.

“Hawke… lend me your energy!” she cried, and the Champion clasped their forearms together.

A surge of power made her nerves bloom with electric currents, and then she was aiming the mark at the beast and sending that power into its horrific maw. She focused everything she had, everything Hawke had into rending the beast in two.

And it worked.

A green rift soon tore through the spider-leviathan’s middle, sucking enough of it in, that it no longer showed signs of life. Or whatever passed for life in the fade. Parts of it started to fly towards them, and Nora knew they couldn’t stick around any longer.

“Come on!” she shouted, taking a step towards home, ground trembling beneath her. But the sound of her voice was lost under a terrible, deafening _boom,_ as the rift she’d created exploded and quadrupled in size. She found herself taking a frightened step back, watching as it merged with the portal to Adamant. And even then it kept growing, swelling and pulling at her and threatening to suck her in.

She fought against the gravity of the rift but it was no use, her feet dragging along the ground as some invisible force claimed her with all the strength of a storm-tide. Thanks to the broken physics of the fade, nothing but the remains of the creature were escaping, and a giant, tentacle of a limb flew right past her head. She barely dodged it, and before she could even think to warn the other mage, she heard him cry out behind her.

“Hawke!” she called frantically, turning around to reach for him, only to see him flying off into the endless strangeness beyond, and he was so far away so fast.

She felt Stroud’s hand grip her arm; he tried to shout something but even the noise was sucked into the abyss behind them. Dread settled heavy in her flesh and bones, making her a stone monument of her own recklessness, as she flew backwards into the rift, struggling and helpless and weightless and numb.

 _This… is how I die…_ she thought, and not for the first time that day… not even the third time in the span of a year.

They fell, and fell, and fell. A million miles perhaps, tumbling so fast through all of it that everything blurred to black, indistinguishable from everything else. An abyss where nothing and everything existed, not even her and especially her. Years might have gone by, where Nora couldn’t force her mind to think another thought.

Utter darkness, and sensory overload. All she could do was fall, and be aware of the fact that she was falling, but action and calculation eluded her. She couldn’t even form a name for this place in her mind, or theorize about where she might be. Dark. Falling. Dark. Falling. These two observations ran over and over in her mind until she thought she might go mad.

Dark. Falling. Dark. Falling.

_Not alone._

Then, out of the nothingness, a presence. Not anything she could see, but in this place where the physical and emotional and spiritual seemed to blur, she had the very real sensation of someone reaching out to her. Not tangibly, for nothing was tangible, but with a distinct affection, as if they were cupping her face in their palm.

 _I’m here._ She experienced, rather than heard the sentiment, but could do nothing with it in her mind. _I’m protecting you. You’re safe._

This… presence, whatever it was, was standing between her and what she would later call the Void. Between her and the abyss that would have driven her insane.

After years and years, everything slowly started to make sense. She gasped for air, breath eluding her lungs as she tried to scream for Stroud. Tried to move, but her arm was still stuck out in front of her, reaching for a Hawke she would never reach. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make sense of where she was, what direction was up or down or sideways. Perhaps she wasn’t falling at all.

And then she hit the ground, hand first **.**

Nora heard a _crack,_ as blinding pain seared through her. She twisted and landed on her shoulder and choked on a breath, not even having enough air in her lungs to scream. All she could do was crumple into a ball on the stone floor, squeezing her eyes tight and clutching at her wrist, pleading for her senses to make _sense_ again.

All around her were the too-loud sounds of battle, metal clashing against flesh, the shriek of a demon, the sound of a rift being closed, by someone that was not her.

Her whole body tense with agony, she forced herself to look, craning her neck to where a man held out his hand, and sealed the rift with a clench of his glowing fist. He was familiar, too familiar, with snow white hair that was even brighter than her own, her father’s nose, her mother’s eyes…

_Aidan._

She fought to scramble to her feet, clutching her broken wrist to her belly as she used her good hand to aim her staff, a challenge to the thing that was taking the face of her brother.

Too busy taking in the cheers of the soldiers nearby, it took a moment for it to even notice her. But when it did, it had the gall to look just as shocked as she was. They stared at each other for a few long moments, before finally it opened its mouth to speak.

“Nora,” it murmured, the look in it’s eyes flickering somewhere between hope and suspicion. Nora glared at it harder, clenching her jaw as she steeled herself to kill it if the need arose.

“Don’t -- come any closer,” she tried to growl when it took a step toward her, but with the throbbing pain in her wrist it came out more like a plead.

“Inquisitor…” Stroud rasped somewhere behind her, as he drew his sword. “What’s happening?”

The thing that looked like her brother turned to the Warden. “Stroud?” it answered, breathless, brows furrowing together. “But I thought… I thought you stayed behind in the Fade... How -- ?”

 _“Silence,_ demon,” Nora commanded the creature. “As if we are not still in the Fade.” She dropped her voice down low so only Stroud could hear her. “Keep your wits about you; this is no doubt some illusion designed to make us falter.”

“Inquisitor!” Nora’s heart did a somersault in her chest at the sound of Cullen’s voice. She looked towards him with expectant eyes, only to watch as he jogged over to -- no, she would not call it by her brother’s name. Something like anger or madness swelled in her chest, throbbing in time with her wrist.

 _“He’s_ the Inquisitor?!” she demanded, before she managed to get her emotions under control. Clearly there was a thing wearing Cullen’s face as well... Clearly they wanted some kind of reaction from her, a reaction she could not give.

“What new nightmare is this?” she muttered, feeling weak. She’d been through this before, at Therinfal, as she'd watched a her that wasn’t her destroy the Inquisition and everything she cared about, everyone she loved. Perhaps this was something like that, as Fear was to Nightmare, perhaps Envy was to this.

It took every ounce of her strength not to falter when Cullen drew his sword, pointing it at her with a cold glare. “Drop your weapon,” he barked at her, and Nora tried to put her left hand in a stance for a spell before remembering it was broken.

The demon with her brother’s face scowled at her. “You dare take the form of my sister, whose soul rests with the Maker? What could you possibly hope to gain from that?” it demanded.

She laughed bitterly at everything about that, and reasserted her stance. “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” Nora answered with scathing courtesy. “It was my brother that died at the Conclave. It was I who survived to become the Herald, and then the Inquisitor.”

It chuckled at her, flashing her brother’s boyish smile so accurately she wanted to vomit. Everything about him seemed spot on, even down to the tension of rivalry that hung between them. “You think _you’re_ the Inquisitor--”

“What’s going on?” came a familiar voice. Nora had never been so happy to see a Tevinter mage in her life.

“Dorian!” she called to him, and he looked at her, confused, and took a step closer to her brother. But no, she had to keep talking, had to keep fighting before despair overtook her.  “Dorian, it’s me… you have to wake up. All of this is just… some kind of illusion, set upon us by an Envy demon or the like. You mustn’t give in!”

Dorian gave her an almost pitying look. “My dear woman, while I admit I would be an enticing target, I think I would know if I was being tempted by an Envy demon.”

“Dorian, this is no time for you to be arrogant," she scolded, and he scowled in response. "You came into the Fade with me! We have to figure out how to get out of--”

The thing-that-could-not-be-Cullen stepped closer until the point of his sword was a foot away from her. “I said drop your staff!” he shouted.

“I do not take orders from demons,” she hissed, and reached into the Fade for a spell.

“Oh, I am no demon,” Cullen replied, a bitter smile on his face as he waved his free hand at her and pushed all of her magic out of her reach. She stumbled backwards, certain she was going to be sick with the vertigo of being silenced, and then a righteous strike and she was tripping over a dead Warden and onto her ass. Cullen strode up and stood over her, pointing the sword at her neck. “DROP. YOUR. STAFF.”

Shocked and trembling, she opened her hand and the staff fell to the ground, bouncing against the stone and rolling away from her. She stared at Cullen, searching his eyes for any sign of recognition, any hint of the affection that he so often had in his gaze when looking at her.

“How dare you treat the Inquisitor this way, after everything she’s done for you?” Stroud demanded, and everyone in the vicinity turned to him with wide eyes.

“Drop your weapon, Stroud,” Nora sighed over the confused murmurs, still staring at the Commander. “We are not in the Fade. No demon could emulate Templar powers,” she said, and heard the ring of a sword as it hit the stone.

"What should we do then, my lady?" Stroud fretted.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "I suppose we just need to bide our time until we can find a way out of this place."

“Now, Cullen,” came the voice of her brother, a patient warning. “I hope you can understand my hesitance in allowing you to kill this woman, on the off-chance she actually is my sister. There seems to be something rather strange going on here. And it seems she wishes only to defend herself from demons... and I _think_ that means she's on our side.”

“As you say, Inquisitor,” Cullen huffed, but didn’t move or take his eyes off of Nora. “Put up both your hands where I can see them. Cooperate and no harm will come to you,” he said, voice only slightly softer than before.

“I think... my wrist is broken,” Nora replied, wincing as she attempted to comply by opening her fingers through the pain.

Cullen’s eyes grew wider once her palm was visible. “Your Worship, you need to see this,” he called out, and her brother ran over to meet them. He took one look at Nora’s left hand and dropped to his knees beside her.

“Find Solas,” he ordered to no one in particular, and then gingerly cupped her marked hand into his own.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another Inquisitor accidentally falls into another playthrough fic! XD  
> This fic was born out of inspiration from [this fanart](http://yuhimebarbara.tumblr.com/post/109476170586/aaaaaaaaaaand-my-latest-commission-for), and also my noticing that it’s pretty ridiculous that you can use the Mark of the Rift ability in the Fade with no consequences.  
> And I'm just gonna warn you... Cullen/F!Trevelyan is not the endgame. But that relationship is really heavily featured. That's all I'll say for now cuz I don't wanna give too much away. Hope you stay with me anyway. :)


	2. But I remember everything

Nora was surrounded by familiar faces, a tent full of people she'd fought beside, entrusted with her life. Now they looked at her with such overt distrust, it made the blood freeze in her veins. Cullen, Cassandra and Hawke exchanged frantic whispers in their chairs near the entrance, eyes cutting over to her with threatening glares.

She'd felt less cold and lonely stumbling through the blinding snow after the fall of Haven.

Meanwhile her brother just watched with rapt, almost alarmed attention, as two mages studied her and Stroud. Her wrist set and secured in a splint, and the earthen aftertaste of a few healing potions on the back of her tongue, she could finally allow Solas to study her hand without excruciating pain. He poked and prodded for a few minutes, looking more disturbed than she had ever seen him. On her right, Dorian was waving a hand over Stroud, a spell of revealing emanating from his fingers, checking for mind-altering spells and other enchantments.

"So what's the verdict, then?" Aidan asked, a small crack in his voice belying the unease beneath his nonchalant tone.

"She... is human," Solas answered reluctantly, only looking up at him for a moment before staring once again at the Anchor.

"But she is completely human? Not like that demon thing we met, what was his name?" Aidan inquired with a dismissive flick of his hand.

Nora watched as Solas glared at her brother. "Cole was not a demon," the elf almost growled. "But no. She is not any kind of spirit. Just a regular human. A mage of no small power, but human."

"Wait, what do you mean, 'was'?" Nora demanded. "What did you do with Cole?"

Aidan sat up straighter in his chair, narrowing his eyes. "You know Cole?" It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

"Well, yes... But -- not because I'm... not because I'm a demon!" Nora stammered. "He -- Cole saved my life! At Therinfal..."

Now it was the Commander's turn to perk up. Though he only barely did, and if Nora hadn’t known him so well, she would have thought him entirely disinterested. "You were at Therinfal Redoubt? With the Red Templars?"

The pain that welled up in her heart upon seeing the suspicion in his eyes, eclipsed even the throbbing of a broken bone. And then there was the fact that he didn’t seem himself; his voice was flatter than usual, like he was experiencing the whole conversation through a fog. His usually expressive eyes seemed clouded and far away.

"Not _with_ them, no..." Nora replied, sensing that she was losing ground. She clutched at the front of her shirt to find the pendant hidden underneath it, pulling at it out of nervous habit. "I went to recruit the Templars to the Inquisition, but most of them were corrupted when I arrived. And the Lord Seeker was an impostor. An Envy demon who had stolen his identity.”

 _“What?”_ Cassandra squawked. “Lord Seeker Lucius…. How can that be?”

Nora frowned. “How do you not know about that?” Cullen and Cassandra simply exchanged bewildered glances. “The demon tried to steal my mind as well. But Cole helped me repel its attack and reveal its true form. I defeated it, and managed to save enough of the Templars, that we were able to close the Breach."

Cassandra and Cullen whispered amongst themselves, then the Commander turned to her, suspicion evident in his eyes. “Envy demons... are quite rare. And powerful.”

“I am aware of that, having fought one,” Nora retorted, giving him a condescending flutter of her eyelids. On the inside, she wanted to scream. The Cullen she knew would never have questioned her integrity, or her prowess in battle. “Surely the Inquisitor of this... _world_ also encountered the beast?”

More whispering. Aidan had one ear turned to the two warriors, a thoughtful frown on his face as he kept his eyes on Nora. "We never made it to Therinfal," he said, shaking his head. "We recruited the mages to help close the Breach instead."

Nora's spine shivered with a question she didn't want to know the answer to. "Then... what became of the Templars?"

Aidan pressed his lips together, and they were white with the tension before he answered. "They laid siege to Haven."

 _"We_ should be the ones asking the questions here," Cassandra cut in before he could elaborate.

"We are not _interrogating_ my sister, Seeker."

"We don't even know that she _is_ your sister!"

And then the bickering began. But Nora retreated into her mind, not bothering to keep up with the conversation going on around her. Her mind was reeling as she looked over at Stroud. He met her eyes; a stealthy lift of his eyebrow said he was still ready to fight for her, if she only said the word.

Nora contemplated it. She still had the hilt of her spirit blade on her belt. They hadn’t known what it was, else they would have taken it away from her. But they were outnumbered, with a powerful Templar and a Seeker on their side. Fighting at this point was not an option. She answered Stroud with a tight shake of her head.

"Perhaps it might be best to start at the beginning," Dorian was saying to Aidan, a soothing tone in his voice that Nora hardly recognized.

"I agree," Solas chimed in. "I am most interested to hear how she came to have the Anchor on her hand."

Nora took in a deep breath and let it out to calm herself. Being spoken about like she wasn't present wasn't her favorite thing. "Alright... the beginning," she sighed, and shifted a bit in her chair. "Both my brother Aidan and I were at the Divine's conclave. He was there representing our family's interests -- or rather, the interests of the Chantry," she said with a pointed look in his direction, and Aidan rolled his eyes. "I was there representing a faction of the rebellion, that was willing to consider returning to the Circles.

“He and I ran into each other at the temple,” she recounted, leaning back in her chair as she began to feel a bit more confident. “I pulled him into an empty corridor, and we got into an argument."

"Can you corroborate this, Inquisitor?" Cassandra said, looking at Aidan. Nora’s stomach lurched every time someone said the title and wasn’t talking about her. She wondered if she'd ever get used to that. If one day she would just accept this world where everything was wrong, and convince herself that her own memories were just dreams.

"Yes, that's what I recall as well. And what did we argue about?" he prompted Nora, like a teacher might ask a pupil, testing her.

"I said that it was ridiculous our family's interests didn't include my well being... You told me I was being unreasonable, and I accused you of being naive and short-sighted," she answered, making it clear with her tone that the sentiment hadn’t changed. Aidan closed his eyes and responded with nothing more than a stiff tilt of his head, like he’d suddenly developed a crick in it.

"And what happened then?" Solas asked, still kneeling beside her.

Nora closed her eyes. This part was full of the memories that had been stolen from her, that she'd only just recovered in the Fade. Except it seemed forever ago somehow, the Divine's words nothing more than a distant echo in her mind. "We... heard a voice," she began. "Dark, and impossibly loud, seeping through stone and wood. It said something like, 'Keep the sacrifice still.' I recognized it as sound magic, which I have some amount of expertise in. So Aidan and I went to investigate."

"It was Corypheus?" Cassandra guessed.

"Yes, but... we didn't know that at the time," Nora looked to her brother for confirmation, which he gave with a slight nod, encouraging her to continue. "We walked in on him doing some sort of ritual. He had the Divine captive, and he had that orb," she said, looking at Solas. "The Divine knocked it out of his hand and I caught it. And then everything exploded."

"No... _I_ caught it, and then everything exploded?" Aidan objected, but there was no conviction in his voice.

"Well they can't both be true!" Cassandra scolded.

"-- or can they?" Dorian interjected. "They both have the mark."

"What are you suggesting, Dorian?" Aidan asked, turning his attention, and his whole posture, towards the mage. Nora watched this with interest. She knew of Dorian’s preferences, but her brother’s? She had never been around him enough to know.

"Remember when you first went to Redcliffe?” Dorian asked, gesturing as he spoke with a dramatic point of his finger. If Dorian was some illusion, he was pretty spot on as well. “There was the version of the world where Fiona had met you in Val Royeaux, and the version of the world where she had never been to Val Royeaux at all. They existed simultaneously, allowing different people to remember different things."

"So, what... you think there's some sort of time magic involved here? Nora, do you know how to do time magic?" Aidan asked.

"Not... exactly. Dorian explained the basic theory to me though--"

"Did I?"

"You did. You're very... educational when you’re drunk," Nora said with an awkward smirk.

Her brother all but cackled. "He is, isn't he? Maker, he can go for hours about thaumaturgy if you don't shut him up."

Nora gave him a pained smile. Now was not the time for reminiscing about pleasant things. "Time magic is related to rifts somehow, though isn't it? When I was in the Fade, I defeated a huge monster by putting a rift through its middle and tearing it apart. The rift became so large, it swallowed the rift back to Adamant. It swallowed us up too, and that's how I got here."

"Using the mark in the Fade?!" Solas scoffed. "That was... incredibly foolish."

"We also faced a massive creature when we fell in the Fade," Aidan said thoughtfully. "I didn't think to use the mark against it."

Nora frowned. "How did you get past it, then?"

Aidan pressed his lips together again and his eyes fell to the ground. Behind him, Hawke cleared his throat. "...Stroud volunteered to stay behind and distract it, so we could escape,” the Champion answered.

But Nora knew there was more to it than that. Both men had volunteered. Aidan must have elected for Stroud to stay behind, as she could not bring herself to do.  "And you let him?!" Nora demanded of her brother.

"Yes,” Aidan replied sadly. “I'm sorry, Warden, but I honored your wishes and left you behind. It was not an easy choice to make, but I had to make it quickly."

“Neither was the choice to stay,” Stroud answered, shifting to lean on one arm of his chair. “But I would gladly make it all over again, if it meant Hawke and the Inquisitor could live.” Nora noted with a smirk that he didn’t say _which_ Inquisitor.

"Hold on, let's not get distracted with superfluous details like who lived and who didn't die," Dorian quipped, to several people’s dismay. "Solas, do you think the Anchor would be strong enough to alter time?"

The elf rubbed at his chin. "Not entirely on its own," he pondered. “But if it were to be amplified, like we did at the Breach--”

"There were two powerful mages present," Nora reminded them, nodding at Hawke. "I improvised."

"Incredibly foolish," Solas sneered, but a twitch at the corner of his mouth said he might have been impressed. "But yes, I suppose between whatever ritual Corypheus was doing at the temple, and the Lady's stunt... it is possible some sort of time anomaly was created."

"I would say _more_ than possible," Dorian said, gesturing toward Nora. "Otherwise, what explanation do we have?"

"I... can think of no other," Solas admitted.

"So..." Scowling, Nora looked back and forth between the two other mages. "How do I change things back to the way they’re supposed to be?"

Her heart clattered in her chest as she watched Dorian’s expression soften into something truly sorrowful and sympathetic. "I don’t think you can, love."

"What?! Why not?" She turned to Solas, hoping to get a different answer, but he just shook his head at her.

"I would strongly discourage you from trying," he warned. "Even if you could try to replicate the spell--”

“Which you couldn’t,” Dorian interrupted. “Too many variables.”

“There is no guarantee you would change things back to the way you remember. It’s more likely you would only make them worse. You might change things so that neither of you survived, leaving us with no one to close the rifts at all."

"But... we can't know that for sure... can we? There has to be a way..." Nora pleaded, feeling her throat swell up with the urge to cry.

 _"Abelas,”_ Solas said, putting a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I would urge you to try and make the most of the situation. Who’s to say it isn’t supposed to be this way? Better for us to have both of you than neither."

Nora turned to face her brother, bracing herself against a hysterical laugh with a hand on her forehead. She could feel the panic rising up in her, like bile in the back of the throat. “I’m sorry,” she chuckled bitterly. “This can’t… this can’t be happening. You can’t honestly expect me to just... _live with it?!_ I’m supposed to just... fucking _accept_ the fact that my destiny was ripped away from me? And _get used to_ a world where my _little brother_ is the Inquisitor?" she demanded, gesturing wildly at him.

"I'm really not all that bad at it, I don't think," Aidan said with a wounded chuckle.

"Oh _really?_ I haven't been here two hours, and already I've heard of at least five decisions I greatly disapprove of," she snapped back.

"Well, all the more reason for you to stay and get me straightened out," Aidan replied with a charming Trevelyan smile, and rose to his feet. "I know you haven't been here to witness it," he said, taking Nora's hands into his own and pulling her up from the chair. Her brow creased so much it was making her head hurt. "But I've come to see things differently since we last spoke. Regarding magic, the Circles… many things. I've grown up a lot, I think. And I've always regretted that we left things the way we did."

"M-me too," Nora croaked, fighting the lump in her throat as she searched his eyes. She felt so lost, so helpless, and there would have been something comforting about the way Aidan brushed his thumb across the back of her hand, if only she could bring herself to trust him. But trusting him would mean accepting that all this was real.

"I'm just glad you're alive," he said softly, and then pulled her into a suffocating hug.

It only took a moment for the tension in her muscles to shift from fear to sorrow. With her good hand, she clutched at the leather of Aidan's jacket and squeezed her eyes tight, letting two hot tears fall down her cheeks and onto his shirt. Nora held off on breathing for as long as she could, not wanting the others to hear her cry. Crying wasn't a very Inquisitorial thing to do -- but she wasn't the Inquisitor anymore, and with that thought, finally the burning in her lungs made her inhale with a jagged sob. Perhaps she should have been crying tears of joy, for being reunited with her brother. But all she could think of was the world she'd lost, the one where Dorian was her best friend and Cullen trusted her with his heart and his darkest secrets.

"Maybe we should give these two a moment alone," Dorian suggested, and the rest of them quietly excused themselves. She could still hear muttering beyond the tent, but it sounded less venomous than before.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, sister," her brother whispered into her hair once they were alone. "I can't even imagine being in your place... but hey," he said, pulling back to look at her, giving her a reassuring smile. "Two Heralds of Andraste? Two of us, that have come back from the dead? Multiple times? We Trevelyans must really be something special."

She just snorted at that, managing to curl her mouth into a smile, but still on the verge of another wave of panic and tears.

"Tell you what. If you're not planning on busting out in demons or anything," he said, and it must have been a joke, but Nora just frowned at him, not getting the reference. "Never mind. What I mean is, I think both of us would feel better after a good night's sleep. Surely we can pick this up in the morning.” Aidan tilted his head in that compassionate way their father would, whenever she skinned her knee or got scared of the dark as a child. “We've both been through a lot today."

Nodding weakly, Nora sniffled, trying to pull herself together. "Where -- where should I sleep?" she rasped.

"In my tent with me, of course," Aidan chuckled, and then walked over to where her staff had been set on the floor, confiscated and then forgotten by Cullen. "Come on,” he insisted, and handed her the weapon, a decisive show of trust.

* * *

Their trip through camp was strangely reminiscent of that first day at Haven, when Cassandra had led her in bonds towards the hole in the sky. While there wasn’t so much open hatred, many familiar faces still glared at her, or turned and whispered about her to someone else, or just didn’t react to seeing her at all.

Aidan kept a hand on her back as he guided her through the labyrinth of tents. He stopped a few times to speak with a soldier or follower, allowing them to shake his hand and fawn over him. Then he would dutifully introduce Nora as his sister, “and esteemed Enchanter of the Ostwick Circle,” she heard him say, and wasn’t that a lifetime ago? She managed to nod and greet them with a polite bow, but it was about all she had the energy to do, especially with her face still puffy and red from crying.

“An extra bedroll, if you have it, Ser Morris,” Aidan said as he strode up to the quartermaster. “Anything else you need, sister?”

“Oh, you know, just… everything,” Nora chuckled to keep from crying about it.

“My apologies m’lady, but we’re all out of kingdoms today,” Ser Morris joked.

She managed a weak smile in acknowledgement of the joke. “Just some underwear and an extra shirt and trousers would do for now.”

Ser Morris rummaged around and found the requested items. “Here you are m’lady,” he said, handing them to her in a bundle. “Those should be about your size. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Nora thanked him, and then her brother’s hand guided her to the left. “This way,” he said, and led her towards a particular tent. It was bigger than the others, but not by much, but it was made with the crimson and gold of the Inquisition, unlike the other tents which were the typical drab grey. He stopped in front of it and turned to her, reaching to take the bedroll out of her hands. “I just um… need a moment. Wait here,” he requested with that boyish grin of his.

“Certainly,” Nora replied, and watched her brother disappear behind the tent flap.

“Oh, um… I hope you don’t mind if my sister shares a tent with us,” Aidan said once inside.

 _“Oh,”_ she heard Dorian say. Nora silently wished for the Fade to swallow her whole again. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. Dorian and her brother _were_ sleeping together. Surely they’d want their privacy. But where else was she supposed to sleep? She shivered from the dry desert cold; the sun had set some time ago and the temperature was quickly plummeting.

“Not at all!” Dorian had never sounded more _polite._ “Do I need to--”

“Oh no. I’m sure the three of us can share amiably?” Aidan insisted, though his voice sounded a bit strained.

“Well… alright then?” Dorian replied, and then there was the very guilty-sounding rustle of bedding, and some hushed whispers. After a few moments, the two men scrambled out of the tent, welcoming Nora with forced smiles.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing with Dorian as well,” Aidan said to her, and gave her an apologetic wince.

“Oh, no, that’s fine,” Nora answered, shaking her head. “Though I hope I’m not… _imposing.”_

“But how could you _possibly_ be imposing?” Aidan’s laugh was overly cheerful. “You’re my sister. As a gentleman of House Trevelyan, it is my duty to keep you safe,” he said with a hand over his heart and a small bow. Nora glared daggers at him but he just tutted at her and put a hand on her arm. “Now, now. I know that you can take care of yourself. Your heroism in the Mage-Templar War was widely recounted after your death, even if you wouldn’t have liked it to be. But this is my honor at stake, and the honor of our family.”

“He is quite right, milady,” Dorian concurred. “Besides, we did just get you back from the dead. I’m sure you can understand your brother’s concern.”

Nora just huffed at that and pouted at the two young men, as she silently concluded that they were only patronizing her to distract from their awkward bind. They obviously meant for her to assume they were just platonic tent-mates. And she was too tired to make a quip about Dorian and her brother’s ‘honor’ anyway.

“Go in and get changed,” Aidan offered, pulling the tent flap open for her. “We’ll come back in when you’re ready.”

Taking one last look at the pair of them, Nora removed her staff and crouched into the tent, taking a seat on her bedroll with the staff laid beside her. She took a moment just to hold her head in her hands, scrubbing at her face and trying to calm herself after everything that had happened.

She’d done this to herself. One moment of pride, of overconfidence in her abilities and she had lost everything. Even now, she could hear passers-by fondly address her brother with the title that had been _hers_. All of it had been hers. Her army, her friends, her responsibilities, her life.

Not a single soul for miles knew who she was, save for Stroud and her brother. Sure there would be people back in Ostwick -- her parents --

Her parents thought she was dead. Everyone she knew thought she was dead.

Once she got past the initial shock of it, like a heavy hammer to the chest, there was something oddly freeing about that notion. She could be anyone. She could go anywhere. For so long she had felt herself slowly breaking under the burden of being the Inquisitor, and now she was free.

But then there was Cullen. Even now, she couldn’t stop her mind from wanting to go to him, to pour her heart out about everything that had happened as she always did after a mission, to take comfort in his arms. It had become such a habit, something she relied on to keep her from falling apart. She’d had no idea how much she needed him, and now he was a stranger.

Nora shook her head, pressing her fingers against her mouth as she fought back more tears. No, she couldn’t think about it any more that night. She needed to sleep.

She started to remove her clothes, but quickly figured out she couldn’t make much progress with her left wrist in a splint. She struggled with her outer coat for a few moments before muttering, “Oh, balls.”

The low voices outside the tent went silent. “...Everything alright in there?” Aidan called out.

“No,” she answered in a clipped groan.

Aidan’s face appeared through the flap. “What’s the matter?”

“My bloody wrist,” Nora complained, wriggling so he could see how one of her elbows was stuck in her jacket.

“Oh, you poor dear,” he snickered warmly and knelt beside her, making her smile despite herself as she held her arm out for him to pull off her sleeve. “When did you get such a foul mouth?”

“When did you start growing facial hair? Last week, obviously,” she retorted, squeezing at the bit of manly stubble on his chin with her good hand. He pulled away from her, scrunching up his face like she was a buzzing fly.

Catching a familiar scent, she sniffed at the air. "It smells like lyrium in here,” she said, brow creasing. “I hope you’re not letting Dorian hit that stuff too hard.”

Aidan didn’t say anything at first, just smiled at her, looking a little sad. He swatted at her as she tried to undo her buttons one handed, insisting on doing it himself. "Remember when we shared a room? As children?" he asked softly.

Nora nodded, struck mute by exhaustion and embarrassment. But it would seem Aidan was content to completely ignore her partially-naked form, preferring nostalgia.

"And you started having the nightmares?” he went on. “We knew you were a mage, but our parents hadn't figured it out yet."

“I remember,” she replied, the words sticking in her throat.

"I made you a promise one night, when we were hiding under the covers together.”

Nora didn’t answer that, just pressed her lips together and fought a losing battle against another onslaught of tears. _Blast it,_ was she ever going to stop crying?

“I swore to you I would become a Templar, so I could protect you,” Aidan said, and wrapped the clean shirt over her shoulders to cover her up.

"You were _six,"_ Nora croaked through a smile, proud and brokenhearted all at once.

Her brother stitched his brows together, giving her a regretful look that was piercingly sincere. "Even so--"

"Aidan, please…” she said, grabbing for one of his hands to squeeze it tight. “I don't hold that against you. It's a good thing you didn't join the Order. Look where they are now."

He shook his head, eyes stuck on the dirt beneath them. "What I mean to say, is... I became a templar after all."

Taken aback, Nora shook her head in return, blinking back tears. "Father would never have allowed that. You’re second in line to--"

"No, I never joined the Order,” Aidan clarified. “But... the lyrium is mine. I recently started taking it. And I've learned some templar abilities."

A series of memories echoed in Nora’s mind. _A gloved hand clutching at the edge of a table. The scorching heat of the blacksmith’s fire. The sound of a fist crashing into a bookcase._ "Lyrium is very dangerous, brother,” she entreated. “Too dangerous to be trifled with for the sake of a childhood aspiration--"

"Isn't all of this dangerous?” Aidan interrupted with an incredulous laugh. But then the brightness vanished from his voice, replaced with dark, scathing smoke. “I needed an edge against my opponents,” he almost growled. “I have to stop Corypheus, no matter the cost. I have seen what will happen if I fail."

"You’ve _seen?”_ Nora repeated, skeptical. “What... you had some kind of vision? I didn't have visions."

"Not quite,” Aidan admitted, distracting himself with straightening her clothes. “But that's a story for a different day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remind me never to write a scene with at least eight people in the same room, ever, ever again. (Except there's one more scene like this later in the fic but it's the Wicked Grace scene so it'll be worth it)  
> I'm on tumblr at becausenobreeches if you want to flail at me about things.


	3. I will let you down

Nora didn’t sleep at all that night. Just lay there listening to her heart pound and her brother’s breathing beside her. From the sound of it, he didn’t get much sleep either, but managed to doze off some time before dawn. But Nora couldn't shake the notion that if she closed her eyes, she would stop existing again, as if the Void were lurking, waiting for her just behind her eyelids.

That left her with a lot of time to think sleep-deprived, run-ragged thoughts. Meticulously, and with some effort of concentration, she backtracked through everything that had occurred in sequence: the battle at Adamant, the fall into the Fade, the fight with the Nightmare, the Void…

Solas and Dorian insisted it was impossible to reverse what had happened. But what was being the Inquisitor about, if not doing impossible things? She lay in the darkness for a long time, fighting sleep and formulating a plan. She made up her mind as she saw the first glow of purple through the tent flap, rising and gathering her staff and her dragonhide jacket as quietly as she could.

The camp was peacefully still, just a silhouette against the faint morning light. She could almost fool herself into believing that everything was already back to normal, until she approached the edge of the cluster of tents and was greeted by a guard.

“You have business outside of camp?” the armored woman said gruffly, crossing her arms.

“Not far, just a few paces away. To do some exercises,” Nora answered, trying to sound friendly through her nerves and exhaustion, gesturing to her staff, as if it explained anything. The guard just nodded and tilted her head back, signaling that Nora was free to go. Still, Nora could feel that she was being watched as she put some distance between herself and the tents, facing to the south.

But that was fine. By the time it was done, they would be too far away to stop her.

The camp lay behind her, strewn across the purple sand in the shadow of Adamant. And before her was the Abyssal Rift, the canyon stretching so deep and so wide that it seemed like the edge of the world.

Taking the staff off her back, she tested it in her good hand, sweeping it just over the sand and then outward, away from her chest. She glided her opposite hand through the air as if it were the surface of a serene pond, moving as gracefully as she could with the splint binding her wrist. She focused on feeling her mana pull at the Fade without actually calling any magic through… _yet..._ just testing the state of the Veil. It was weak here at Adamant, but it was definitely there, which meant she was in the waking world. But more importantly, the conditions were perfect for creating a rift. That much she knew from experience.

Magic crackled beneath her fingertips and through to the tip of her staff, as she practiced attacking from different angles. Upper left, upper right. She couldn't sweep from underneath without twisting her left hand, so she stabbed to the middle instead. Her wrist was a handicap, and undoubtedly fighting was in her future. For a moment, she considered finding and waking Stroud, but then there was the possibility he would try to talk her out of it.

It was madness. But there was no other choice. Her exhausted mind had calculated that if she was successful, then Stroud would be fine anyhow.

Shaking, Nora slowly shuffled forward until she was a few feet away from the edge. It might not have been a Void but it was terrifying all the same, just miles and miles of _nothing_ threatening to swallow her. Before she’d fallen into it, she’d been fascinated by the canyon, how humbling it was to stand on the edge of something so inevitably _immense_. And now, well, she’d already fallen into it once and survived, after all.

“It’s a long way down.”

On instinct, she whirled around and brought up her left hand, ready to cast a spell. Even when the sharp pain ripped through her injury, she winced but didn’t back down until she could make out who was approaching through the glare of sunrise.

It was Cullen, she realized with a clench of her heart; between the pounding in her ears and his melancholy tone, she had hardly recognized his voice. She quickly put her hand at her side, and set the end of her staff on the ground, leaning against it. Suddenly hyper-aware of herself, she did her best to look less intimidating but not weak, feeling guilty and defensive all at once.

“I saw you, and thought I’d come over to apologize,” Cullen said as he approached, fur cloak fluttering in the breeze. “For yesterday. If I had known who you were, well… I obviously wouldn’t have… _smote_ you,” he shrugged with just a hint of shyness.

She forced herself to stand her ground, perfectly still, not shifting on her feet or avoiding his gaze like she might have done once, long ago. Nora hadn't felt this way since the Circle, where the Templars were always looking for her to do something wrong, to have the audacity to look guilty, to give them any excuse to unleash their wrath.

Nora didn't want to compare Cullen to that life. He was just as affected by his time in the Circle, even more so if she read correctly between the lines. He didn't sleep well most nights, and that was probably the reason for their meeting at such an early hour.

She realized she had spent far too much time figuring out what she wanted to say, and ended up saying nothing at all. Cullen was already opening his mouth to speak again. “You know, maybe it’s just some leftover chivalric tendencies from when I was in the Order,” he offered, putting one hand on her shoulder. “But I believe when one is near a giant abyss, one is supposed to walk on the outside of the lady.”

Feeling a pang of yearning at the unexpected touch, Nora couldn’t resist him, stoically reveling in it. She allowed him to shift the two of them, Cullen almost dancing with her as he blocked her way to the abyss. “There. That’s better,” he said with the slightest of smirks.

Nora didn’t trust herself to speak just yet, but unfortunately it was her silence that seemed to rouse Cullen’s suspicion. His expression became more guarded, a mixture of warning and worry in his honey-colored eyes. “You weren’t actually thinking of jumping… were you?”

Nora needed to distract him from the answer to that, until she decided what to do. She couldn’t even cast a normal spell with the pain in her hand. How could she possibly hope to open a rift?

A gentle gust of wind brought a familiar scent to her nose, crisp and electric, and appealing if not for the underlying implication. Adrenaline spiking, she leaned more heavily on her staff, every muscle in her body trembling and threatening to make her shudder. Her pulse throbbed through deep bruises from where Cullen had Struck her the night before. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. It was all starting to make sense. Horrifying sense. “You’re taking lyrium?” she said with a scowl.

Cullen let the surprise show on his face for only a moment, before he narrowed his eyes. She knew the look: he knew what she was doing, but was going to allow it anyway. “I… yes,” he admitted. “I was a Templar before joining the Inquisition--”

“I’m aware of _that,_ Knight-Commander,” Nora scoffed just to see another flicker of surprise on his features. “It’s just… the Cullen I knew. In the world I come from. He had been abstaining from lyrium.”

Brow ruffled, Cullen looked down at the ground and then slowly met her eyes again, pondering hard. He stood a little straighter, resorting back to a templar's posture under scrutiny. “It’s true, I did cease taking it for a time. But the pain… proved too much. I could not endure it, and my health suffered. It was quite a dangerous notion anyway. So I gave up on that foolishness,” he said with a half-hearted sounding chuckle.

Nora shook her head. It wasn’t foolishness at all. “The Cullen I knew… he did have some trouble at first, but he got better. He was much improved by the time we left for Adamant.”

Cullen swallowed visibly. “Was he truly?” he rasped.

Seeing that look in his eyes, Nora had an immediate change of heart. The Cullen of this world needed her too much for her to do something stupid and get herself killed. Maybe her fool of a brother really did need her, too. She needed to do what she could with what she had. At least for now. She had to help make things right.

“Listen,” Nora sighed, taking a step closer to him. “I suppose it’s none of my business… but if my brother did not support your decision to stop, you must know. He has some rather romantic notions about the Order,” she said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the wind. “He’s never stepped foot inside a Circle, doesn’t have the faintest idea what it’s like. But I am certain that you can do this.”

Cullen was back to staring at the lavender sand beneath their feet. “It... really was interfering with my ability to do my duties--”

“Is it not true then, that you would have endured anything to be free of the Chantry’s hold on you? That you wanted _nothing_ to do with that life?” she argued, quoting him as near to verbatim as she could remember. “I mean, either you are the Cullen I knew, or you’re not,” she accused, throwing up her hands.

Cullen looked at her with worried, questioning eyes, bringing his hand up to rub at his neck. “Are we really so different, he and I?” he asked, and Nora would have laughed at the familiar quirk if it wasn’t for the disturbing lack of emotion in his voice.

She rubbed her lips together, moistening them against the dry desert air, trying to chose her words carefully. “To be quite honest… compared to him, you seem… depressed.”

The pain in his eyes and the shift in his jaw told her she’d gone too far. He was closing off, and if she didn’t handle this delicately, she would lose him. Not to death or demons but simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time, because that was what being the Inquisitor was about. It was time for a tactical retreat.

“But it’s none of my business, clearly,” she added quickly, backing away from him as she bowed her head to excuse herself from the conversation. “Forgive me for prying.”

She walked away as fast as she could while retaining her dignity, feeling the back of her throat swell up.

“Wait…” she heard Cullen call out to her. The wind was starting to pick up with the rising sun, so she pretended not to hear.

“My lady,” he said a little louder. She stopped this time, not having the courage to face him as his footsteps came closer, clunking against the sand.

“Do you mean to say… the Cullen you knew… was happy?” he entreated.

Nora squeezed her eyes tight, fighting tears. _Warm, stolen kisses on the battlements. Snarky banter over chess in the courtyard as their feet brushed against each other under the board. The sound of shuffled cards and mugs clinking together, sloshing with ale._  

“...Yes,” she answered, barely more than a whisper, and then forced herself to walk away.

* * *

Aidan might have been awake before the sound of the morning horn, but he didn’t notice until he heard it. The desire to sleep pressing in on his skull, he yawned voraciously and rattled his head, trying to shake out the voice that had haunted his dreams. When he finally opened his eyes, he saw an empty bedroll beside him, and quickly rolled over.

On his right, Dorian was asleep but fidgeting, curled up tight in his bedroll since he had gone without the luxury of sharing warmth with his lover. Aidan scooted closer to him and put a gentle hand on his arm. “Dorian... wake up,” he croaked.

“Mmmph,” the other man grumbled, curling in on himself tighter and tucking his face in as if to hide from the world. Aidan just smiled at him, familiar with this routine by now.

“So, I’m not going mad, am I?” he inquired, smirking when Dorian scowled at the attempt at conversation. He kept his eyes closed, hair and mustache askew. “My dead sister really was sleeping in that bedroll just there?”

That got the mage’s attention. “She didn’t seem all that dead to me. Where’s she runnoff to?” he slurred, straining to lift his head up and see over Aidan’s shoulder.

“Dunno,” Aidan sighed. “I suppose I should go find her.” He shuffled his bedroll even closer to wrap an arm around Dorian’s waist and share a pillow with him. Dorian was warm and soft, but Aidan had learned long ago how to resist the temptation of staying in bed with him all day.

Dorian chuckled softly, eyes open but still heavy-lidded. “You don’t seem overly worried.”

“We’re in the middle of the desert. Where’s she gonna go?” Aidan pointed out. “And besides, without her here, I get to do this,” he said, and slid a hand into Dorian’s hair, pulling him forward for a soft morning kiss.

The mage let out a low sound of interest and melted against him, bringing a hand up to caress Aidan’s hip as Aidan slipped in a little bit of tongue. “I take it you don’t want her to know about us?” Dorian murmured against his lips, his tone wavering between not caring and caring a _lot._

Aidan pulled back and met his eyes, wounded by the implication. “It’s not that I’m ashamed of you or anything. You know that right?”

“Of course,” Dorian replied loftily, even if his voice was an octave lower than usual. “How could you possibly be ashamed of someone so delightful?”

Pulling himself up to sitting, Aidan crossed his legs and reached for Dorian’s hand. This wasn’t the kind of conversation you had lying down. “I’m just not sure how she would react. I don’t know my sister all that well, you know,” he reminded. “She might take it upon herself to inform my parents. And I’m not sure how they would react, either.”

“Listen,” Dorian groaned, straining to sit up, too. “It’s none of her business anyhow,” he said, pulling his hand away to fuss with his hair and the ends of his mustache, all elbows and knees. “If you don’t want to tell her, you don’t have to. Not bloody _everyone_ has to know.”

Aidan couldn’t help but give him a teasing smile. “You look lovely by the way.”

“Shut up,” Dorian growled, but grudgingly laughed when Aidan did.

“I better go--” Aidan said, grabbing his jacket and trying to rise to his feet, but a hand caught his shoulder and kept him in place.

“Hold a moment... Are you alright?” Dorian asked.

Aidan frowned, sincerely trying to think of what his lover could be concerned about. “Of course. It’ll be weird having her around, but --”

Dorian waved a hand, shaking his head to interrupt. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about that whole, walking physically in the Fade thing? Surely you haven’t forgotten.”

“Oh…” Aidan snorted, amused with himself for pushing it out of his mind, even as he shivered at the memory of that terrible place. “There’s been so much going on, I suppose I hadn’t let myself think about it,” he admitted.

Dorian chewed on his lip, and squeezed his hand where it was still heavy on Aidan’s shoulder. “Well, maybe you should?” he suggested, giving Aidan a pleading look.

Surprised by his concerned, Aidan studied Dorian carefully for a moment, considering his request and steeling himself against the lingering echoes of Nightmare, before leaning forward with a placating smile. He pressed his lips over the beauty mark beneath Dorian’s eye, a chaste and reassuring kiss. “Don’t worry,” was all he said, fighting a yawn, and then made himself get out of bed. He pulled his jacket on and looked over his shoulder to his lover one last time. “You getting up?”

“Right behind you,” Dorian answered, with slightest waggle of his eyebrows. “Where I can enjoy the view.”

* * *

He found her over by the horses, affectionately brushing the neck of an Imperial Warmblood. Aidan noted that she’d already bridled and saddled the beast, although she didn’t look to be in any hurry to leave. She seemed content to languidly groom the horse’s hair, as if to comfort herself as much as her chosen mount. Aidan had no idea that his sister knew anything about horses; surely she would not have picked up such knowledge in the Circle.

Aidan’s own horse, a Dales Feral, perked up as he approached, and so he wandered over to gently pet him on the nose. “Morning,” he called out to his sister.

Nora looked over at him briefly before returning her attention to the horse, studying it carefully as it regarded Aidan with wariness at first and then dipped its head. “Where’s Dennet?” she asked.

“Who?”

Nora turned back to him with a frown. “The horsemaster.”

“Oh…" Aidan replied, finally remembering the man. "I imagine he’s still in the Hinterlands with his wife and daughter?”

Nora's expression became even more alarmed. “You didn’t recruit him to the Inquisition?”

Aidan scoffed at that. “Believe me I tried. The man couldn’t be persuaded.”

 _“I_ persuaded him," his sister muttered, and went back to brushing the horse.

“Of course you did," he said with a small roll of his eyes and a bitter grin. Leave it to his older sister to show up and make this a competition. Almost twenty years had passed, but almost nothing had changed. "Going somewhere?” he inquired, trying to sound casual.

“Was thinking about it," she answered. "Obviously I was going to ask first. To borrow a horse, I mean.”

Aidan had to struggle to keep himself upright, as his own horse nudged his shoulder, threatening to knock him over. Hoping for an apple, probably. “Where to?” he asked, with one hand on the horse’s snout to keep him at bay.

“No further than the camp at the end of the canyon,” she shrugged. “I just think a hard ride would help clear my mind.”

Aidan shook his head. “You shouldn’t go out by yourself, sister,” he warned, and immediately she turned on him, eyes ablaze. “Nora. It’s dangerous,” he said, a little sterner.

“Aidan,” she snapped back. “When are you going to get this into your head? _I was the Inquisitor._ I can do everything that you can do. You don’t have to keep treating me like some sort of... distressed _damsel.”_

Just then, he saw a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye and jumped on the opportunity. “Hold that thought,” he said to his sister. “Oh, Cassandra?”

“Yes, Inquisitor?” the Seeker replied, wandering a little closer to the fence.

“I was thinking about going horseback riding, in the desert, all on my own,” he told her with false arrogance. “No companions, no guards, not even a change of underwear.”

Cassandra scowled at him, giving him a hard look, then looked over to Nora, then back to him. “That… sounds… incredibly foolish, Your Worship,” she said cautiously. “You should at least take one person with you. And some supplies.”

He turned back to Nora, pulling an _I-told-you-so face._ “See? You’re not special,” he said, and then threw up his hands. “Or maybe you are. Whatever _works for you._ Just... let me tag along.”

Nora’s head dropped down as she huffed out a sigh. “I really would like to be alone...” she petitioned.

“Didn’t you just come from a world where I was dead?” Aidan argued, tilting his head with incredulity. “How intrusive could my presence really be?”

There was a long silence while Nora chewed on the inside of her lip, glaring at Aidan, but he knew he’d finally won. That’d teach her to insult his skills in persuasion. “Fine. Saddle up,” Nora griped at him.

He gave her a victorious smile and then looked around for a stable boy. “Oi!” he called out. “Saddle up my horse, please. And fetch me some water skins and something to have for lunch.”

“Yes, Inquisitor,” the young man replied.

He patted his horse on the nose and turned back to Nora, who was shaking her head at him, something like amusement or disappointment written on her face. “What?” he chuckled innocently.

“We really are nothing alike,” she replied, arching a brow and sharing an unimpressed look with her horse.

* * *

 

They had to stop twice to let the horses out of the biting wind, when it became too dangerous to keep up Nora's desired pace. Once at Griffon Wing, and once at the Lost Wash Creek, where Nora passed a skeptical look over all of the small trees, declared that none of them were sturdy enough to tie a horse to, and broke out a pair of hobbles from her pack.

“Where did you learn so much about horses?” Aidan yawned, blinking back sleep as he watched her secure her Warmblood’s hoofs with the leather cuffs. The creek was in a canyon, blessedly protected from the wind, but even so, Aidan was warm, heart pounding from their punishing ride.

“Horsemaster Dennet,” Nora said, and then pushed herself slowly off the ground, dusting the sand off her knees. “We should let the horses rest a while, I pushed us all pretty hard. What did you bring for lunch?” she said, going over to Aidan’s pack where it hung from his horse’s saddle.

Aidan raised an eyebrow in concern. “Err, don’t you need to hobble the other horse, too?”

Nora just shrugged, digging around in the pack. “They’ll stay together.”

“Are you sure?”

“If you’re really so concerned about it, you can hobble your own horse. Here,” she said, and handed him a small bundle of food wrapped in paper.

They settled on a large rock by the creek, Aidan watching the horses carefully as he unwrapped his meal of biscuits and salted mutton. Sure enough, even though his Feral wasn’t tied, it showed no signs of wanting to wander off, seeming content to stick close to the Warmblood while they quietly drank from the stream.

“Oh, this one has fruit in it,” Nora declared, pulling her package open to reveal some dried figs and raisins amongst the meat and bread. “I bet it was meant for you... Your Worship,” she said in coy apology, holding it out to him.

Aidan chuckled at her. “That’s alright, I don’t feel much like the Inquisitor right now anyway,” he said, and then stuffed his mouth full of biscuit to keep from saying anything else. He kept watching the horses just to avoid having to look Nora in the eye, but he could feel her eyes on him, discerning and sad.

“You must have learned what I did in the Fade,” she said after a few quiet moments. “About the Divine.”

Heart sinking, Aidan nodded weakly as he swallowed his bread. “Yes,” he rasped.

“You really believed it, didn’t you?” Nora asked, surprisingly worried for him. “That you were the Herald of Andraste?”

“I wanted to…” Aidan sighed, hanging his head down. _“Maker…_ I feel like such a fraud now,” he growled, so angry he was about ready to slap himself in the face. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you want to hear,” he scoffed.

“Not really,” Nora replied between bites. “I never thought I was the Herald.”

He looked up at her then, really _looked_ at the woman that his tiny, frightened sister had grown up to be. Before the conclave, they hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade, and it had been almost two since they had spent any quality time together. There was so much he didn’t know about her. He would have questioned his ability to tell the genuine article from a demonic imitation if she didn’t remind him so much of their mother.

“Do you… do you even believe in Andraste?” he tried.

Nora tilted her head, weighing the question. “I believe she existed. I believe she was a real person, who did great things. I don’t believe she was chosen by the Maker.”

“And the Maker?” Aidan pressed, even as his heart broke a little. “Do you believe in Him?”

She scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand, and then wiped her hand on her trousers. Terrible manners that she must have learned in the Circle along with her heretical beliefs. “Does it really matter if He exists?” she shrugged. “Either way, he’s not here, and has no interest in our suffering. And I have no interest in worshipping a deity like that.”

Aidan laughed nervously at this revelation, and began to scoot away from her. “I’ll uh, just be over here, waiting for you to get struck by lightning.”

“And if He did manage that?” his sister retorted. “I can conjure lightning myself. Does that make me a god?”

Aidan froze mid-scoot, and settled where he was, hands fidgeting with the meal in his lap. “I suppose not…” he conceded wryly, and was rewarded with an _oh-yes-you’re-very-funny_ smile.

They sat and ate in silence for a little while after that, laughing quietly when Aidan’s horse poked his head over the other's back, wanting to see what the two humans were doing. Aidan finally spoke up again when he figured out the tightness in his chest wasn’t going to go away. “Those creatures in the Fade. That took the face of your greatest fear. What did they look like?”

“Ugghh,” Nora shuddered. “Spiders.”

“Same!” he laughed, to her dismay. “I guess we have our dear brother to thank for that.”

“Oh,” she shivered again, brushing imaginary spiders off her arms. “Blighted little buggers. I’ll never forgive Rory for that.”

“Aye,” Aidan concurred. “It really says something that I’m more afraid of spiders than I am of screwing all of this up,” he joked helplessly. If he couldn’t laugh about it then surely he would cry. And he’d rather leave the crying to his sister, if it was all the same.

She wasn’t laughing though, or crying, just looking at him like he’d ripped the thought right out of her heart, and then thoughts were spilling out of him, falling out of his grasp like water or sand through fingers.

“What am I supposed to tell everyone now?” he fretted quietly, staring down at the rippling stream beneath his feet. “The truth?”

Nora bent her head down to meet his eyes, and gave him an affectionate smirk. “Believe it or not…” she said gently. “It won’t damage their faith in you as much as you’d think.”

“...Truly?”

“Well,” Nora pondered. “Probably not. I vehemently denied being the Herald from the very beginning. Didn’t hinder people at all. In fact, they just went on about how humble I was.”

“That... doesn’t make me feel better,” Aidan griped.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Nora replied, rubbing her hands together to clear them of crumbs. “It’s not about you. People will warp and stretch reality until it fits with what they want to believe. Whatever makes _them_ feel better. You don’t have a whole lot of control over that.”

“Still…” he tried to argue. “It seems dishonest.”

“Be as honest as you want. It won’t change anything,” she insisted. “I thought that was what you’d want to hear.”

He barely nodded in response, resolving to do the right thing, the hard thing, in his own heart. He found himself grateful for Nora’s advice, for someone who was on his level but who saw things from the opposite angle. Someone he could go to, when he couldn’t go to anyone else, and who clearly had knowledge about things no one else in his inner circle did. Perhaps her reappearance was proof somehow that the Maker was still with him, that despite the reality of what had occurred at the Temple of Sacred Ashes that he really was blessed. Perhaps the Maker had brought his sister back to him at this pivotal moment to give him a much-needed advantage over his enemy, to remind Aidan not to lose his faith. 

Or perhaps she was proof that he was nothing special at all. That he was just an accident as Alexius had said. Perhaps anyone could have been the Herald, and the mark on his hand was no brand of Andraste's favor, but rather a twice-stolen relic of a culture that didn't even believe in her.

Either way, it only made sense for him to recruit Nora as an Agent of the Inquisition.

“So… what are you going to do now?” he asked, trying to sound earnest. “Go back to Ostwick?” A little reverse psychology never hurt anybody.

Nora’s face hardened, and it was her turn to stare at the creek below, the war within her evident in her eyes. “My place is here with the Inquisition,” she said quietly.

Aidan snorted. “You don’t sound too confident of that.”

“Yeah,” she answered, but it sounded less like triumph and more like surrender. “But as hard as it may be… I know I can help. I think you could use someone like me beside you. Someone who understands. It’s hard having so many people depending on you. I’ll come with you to Skyhold -- if you’ll have me.”

Luckily he was exhausted, or it would have been a struggle to keep from looking smug. Perhaps a small nap would be in order when they finally reached the camp.

“You do have Skyhold, do you not?” she quipped at the last second.

He fought not to roll his eyes at her again. “Yes, I did manage that much without you, sister,” he said, a retort that he thought Dorian would be proud of.

“Well, I’ll be happy to assist you with whatever comes next,” she said, trying and failing to sound gracious.

“What’s next is the ball,” he reminded her. “So I hope you brought your dancing shoes.”

“Wait.”

“Hm?”

“The ball.”

“Yes?”

“The Empress’s ball? At Halamshiral?!”

“Yes, of course... Why?”

“...What month is it?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am on tumblr at becausenobreeches if you want to flail at or with me about things.


	4. My empire of dirt

The ride back to Skyhold was… interesting. Nights were spent in front of the fire, reintroducing herself to all her friends, answering the same questions they'd asked her before. Or listening to her brother's horrifying tales of Redcliffe and Haven, as he stared into the flames with haunted and helpless eyes. Or pretending not to hear the whispers as the word _'she'_ was hissed out in the darkness, the rest of the conversation out of her hearing, save for that one fricative sound.

Whenever she had a moment to herself, Nora did her best to process the reality of the situation, without the dark depression that tried to follow. But the terrible truth closed in around her like a cage, trapping her in until she wanted to scream and flail and shake at the bars. She couldn’t keep her mind from making it some kind of puzzle that she had to put together, a riddle she had to solve, a game she had to win. But all of that was just a construct of her disbelieving mind, some excuse that she could comfort herself with in a world that didn’t make sense.

But this was her world now, and she needed to make an effort if she was going to rebuild a dozen relationships. Even if sulking and wallowing in despair was a tempting alternative, rifts between friends were not of the kind she could magically and instantly close.

By day, Nora rode with Dorian and her brother, observing as they tried and failed to be subtle about flirting with each other. She just pretended not to notice anything, instead pestering Aidan into squabbling with her just because she could. Or distracting Dorian with conversation about different schools and theories of magic, impressing him all over again when she could keep up with his obscure references to ancient tomes. Perhaps a little better this time, since she’d devoured every book he’d ever thrown at her.

“What do you say, Curly?” a dwarven voice called out one day, seated behind Sera on her spotted steed. “When we get back to Skyhold, I wanna put together a game of Wicked Grace.”

“I’m not sure, Varric...” Cullen sighed, still sounding weak and tired.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Varric wheedled. “You do know how to have fun, don’t you?”

 _“Fun_ was unfortunately not part of my intense Templar training, no,” Cullen chuckled, and Nora saw a tiny glimmer of hope. She decided to act on it. She pulled on the reigns to still her horse, until the Commander caught up to her and she could ride beside him.

“Just a piece of advice, Ser Cullen, If I might be so bold,” she teased, arching her eyebrows at him when he glanced over. She leaned her weight forward to get her horse moving again. “Something that’ll help you, if you do decide to play.”

“Well, let’s hear it then?” he sighed, but he was smiling.

“Never bet against an Antivan.”

Her brother twisted around his saddle, eyes flitting between the two of them. “Oh, there’s a story _there,”_ Aidan purred with a curious grin.

“There is,” Nora answered, preening. “But I’m not sure the Commander would want me to tell it.”

“Well in that case, you simply _must_ tell us,” Dorian insisted, turning around in the saddle to give her a pair of pleading calf eyes.

She turned to Cullen, rubbing her forehead apologetically as she watched him mull it over. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” he shrugged at last.

Nora snickered at him, and bit her lip to keep from cackling at his expense. “Only your pride,” she told him, and then regaled them with a tale that almost made Varric and her brother fall out of their saddles.

 

* * *

 

The wards of Skyhold greeted her with a tingle as she passed through the arched double gates. Stronger than she remembered, but of course if Aidan had the mages, then someone would have figured out how to bolster the ancient magic by now. These invisible barriers protected the keep from evil, and interestingly enough, the cold. Thus there was a sharp change in temperature as she and the others entered the courtyard, going from frigid winter to something that might have passed as a particularly cool spring.

What worried Nora, however, was what the wards could not protect her from.

She was a mage. It had not been an issue for a long time after being named the Herald. Most had conveniently turned a blind eye, or had actually welcomed it. But here… in the eyes of some, she would be just another apostate.

And she was a woman. Soldiers she did not recognize gave her looks she certainly _did,_ suggesting things with their eyes that made her blood chill again. No one dared to look at her like that when she was the Inquisitor, at least not when she was looking back. She just had to hope that being a Trevelyan and a 'dangerous apostate' would protect her from what was already within the walls.

Nora, Aidan and Cullen went straight up to the war room, to debrief Josephine and Leliana on the events at Adamant. Then, of course, there was the matter of Nora's existence, the explanation of which left both the female advisors with rather doubtful looks on their faces.

“So… let me get this straight,” Josephine tried, her quill tensely poised in her hand. “Lady Trevelyan died at the conclave. But then somehow she ended up in another version of the world, where she was the Inquisitor?”

“More like, _I_ died at the conclave, and then _she_ was the Inquisitor, but then accidentally altered time so that she wasn’t anymore,” Aidan re-explained. “And then _I_ was the Inquisitor and _she_ was the one that died, except she’s here now. It’s all terribly confusing and involves a lot of big magical words that Dorian insists he didn’t make up, and some he actually did when writing his dissertation.”

“Oh…” was all the Ambassador said in response.

Nora could see the gears turning in her mind and decided she’d better speak up. “Don’t worry, Lady Josephine, I have no intention of usurping my brother’s position. Unless he gives me cause,” she warned, and glared at him as gently as she could. “What’s done is done. I am simply here to help in whatever way I can. Which right now, includes some information about the Empress’s assassin.”

Leliana’s reaction was little more than a blink of her eyes, though they opened a little wider than before. “You know who it’s going to be?”

“Before I answer that,” Nora replied, holding up a hand. “I’d like to put up a barrier. For sound. So we might not be overheard.”

She turned to Cullen, keeping her tone light. “Does anyone have any objections? Commander?”

His brow ruffled. “Um, no?” he said with a confused frown. “Why would I object to that?”

Nora didn’t answer that, wouldn’t let on that she knew more than he knew she did, just drew upon her mana and stretched her arm above her head, sweeping almost seductively with her hand, with each finger folding in precise succession.

“I didn’t know mages could do barriers for sound,” Aidan murmured beside her, as magic flickered into an orb that engulfed the table and everyone around it.

“Nor I,” said the Commander.

“Sound magic,” Nora reminded them. “It’s a specialty of the Ostwick Circle.”

“That could prove very useful,” Cullen pondered with a smirk, looking a little impressed, and Nora’s heart fluttered for a moment before she was brought down to the ground.

“Back to the point,” Leliana admonished the three of them. “Do you have a name?”

“Grand Duchess Florianne,” Nora declared.

“Celene’s cousin?!” Josephine exclaimed, and Leliana wrinkled her nose.

“The very same.”

The two advisors shared a look, bending to see around Cullen, and then it was the Nightingale who spoke next. “...How did you come to find this out?” she inquired with narrowed eyes.

“I was there, I saw it happen,” Nora shrugged. “You see, in the version of the world I come from, the ball has already occurred.”

She did not expect the silence that came after. All four of the others in the room stared at her, worry plainly written on their faces now. Even Cullen’s expression darkened considerably, and he showed hardly any interest in the ball the first time around. Somehow she had managed to say the exact wrong thing. Wasn’t this supposed to be good news?

“Wait…” her brother said at last. “So you… _saw_ the Grand Duchess attack Celene?”

 _Oh._ “I… yes…” Nora stammered, fighting to make her face blank, heart drumming in her chest. “Unfortunately, I was not able to save her. I was too late.” It wasn’t a lie. But it was a close thing. She suppressed a shudder; who knew what they would do to her, if they found out she had let it happen?

“But… maybe…” she tried, mentally clawing her way out of a treacherous hole. Luckily she had been taught by the Nightingale herself how to lie, and taught by the Ambassador how to come out of the shittiest situation smelling like roses. “Maybe you will fare better brother. Perhaps... together we can succeed where I failed, on my own.”

“Tell us everything you remember,” Leliana demanded, leaning into the table in an intimidating manner worthy of the name, Inquisition. _“Every_ detail.”

“I need some parchment,” Nora said quickly.

A bit of commotion, and then a blank sheet was flattened out in front of her, and a graphite pencil found its way into her hand. She hunched over the table and began to draw the palace’s floorplan from memory. “Alright, so here’s the vestibule… and then off to the side, there’s this room, with a sculpture in honor of the Hero of Ferelden.”

“The Hall of Heroes,” Leliana contributed, and Nora fought the urge to glare.

“And then beyond that is the servant’s quarters…” she continued, and then paused, looking around the table with somber eyes. “It was a bloodbath in there. Venatori snuck in this way, behind the ah, the Grand Apartments. And slaughtered all the servants.”

"Maker's breath," Cullen muttered.

Leliana tilted her head, continuing her interrogation routine. “Venatori.”

“Yes,” Nora insisted. “A couple dozen or so. We also found the body of a Council of Heralds emissary. With Gaspard’s knife in his back. An obvious framing.”

“Leliana,” Cullen spoke up. “Can you get some of my soldiers in to take care of the Venatori?”

“Absolutely. We will have to be careful that we are not seen, so as not to alarm Celene or her guests,” the spymaster replied, then wheeled back on Nora. “Now what about the Duchess?”

“She told me there was something in the Royal Quarters I needed to see. What I found was a Fade rift. By the time I made it back to the ballroom…” Nora looked down and shook her head, trying to look contrite. “It was too late. She stabbed Celene in the back in the middle of the speeches.”

Nora regretted it. She really did. That was a fact she had never confessed to anyone, but as soon as Celene fell to the floor, with that look of shock on her face, she knew she’d made the wrong choice. But it was done, and she had never dreamed of having a chance to do things over. But now it might have been the only thing she could make right in a world of wrong.

“We _cannot_ allow this to happen,” her brother growled beside her. “If Celene falls, Orlais falls; the world falls.”

“If true, this information will be more than enough to help us save her,” Josephine pointed out, trying to reassure him.

Nora nodded, and put a hand on his shoulder. “You must be careful that this does not get out to anyone, brother. _Anyone,”_ she repeated. “Even your closest confidants. If our enemy should receive word that we know of their plans, they may take another route entirely.”

“True,” Leliana concurred, albeit a bit grudgingly. “This information does not leave this room. One more thing, if you don’t mind, Lady Trevelyan?” she said with thinly veiled snottiness.

“Of course,” Nora said snottily right back.

The smile on the Nightingale’s face was an overt challenge. “What was the Grand Duchess wearing?”

"You _can't_ be serious,” Cullen scolded her, but Leliana was not deterred.

“Chocolate,” Nora declared, crossing her arms and meeting the spymaster’s gaze. “And a color that I believe was coined as ‘champagne pink’. A butterfly motif. The material… left something to be desired. It looked a bit too much like pajamas, in my opinion,” she shrugged. “Oh, one more thing, there is a name I think you’ll be most interested to hear, spymaster.”

Leliana leaned back, eyebrows arched and her back curved like a cobra ready to strike. “Oh?”

Nora let her mouth curl into a victorious smirk as she spoke the name. “Morrigan.”

* * *

_“Well…”_ she huffed, after the others had left the room and she was standing there with only her brother. “That was... interesting.”

“Indeed,” he replied, moving over to the door to hold it open for her. “I’ve never seen Leliana look quite so… shown up. Though I would recommend you not get on her bad side."

Nora couldn’t help but smile. "I'd like to think she was impressed enough to let me live.”

 _"I_ certainly was," Aidan teased, as they walked side by side down the long hallway, strands of sunlight warming Nora’s face, but doing nothing for the fatigue that was making her eyes over-sensitive and threatening to give her a headache.

“Ugh,” she sighed wearily. “Well now that _that’s_ over, I’m ready to -- wait…” Something occurred to her, and so she stopped just in front of the door and turned to Aidan, narrowing her eyes.

“Hmm?” he gave her a look that she recognized from long ago. ‘I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I’m not entirely certain I’ve done _nothing_ wrong? I’m preemptively sorry I got caught?’

"You’re sleeping in my room,” Nora accused.

“Hmm. Sorry about that,” he intoned, in a way that said he really wasn’t.

“I’m _loathe_ to see what you’ve done with the decor,” she groaned.

“Ah-ha-ha.” Aidan allowed himself a wounded chuckle as he opened yet another door.  “I had some… help…” he insisted cryptically.

Nora didn’t have a chance to inquire further. “Oh Josephine,” her brother called in the next moment, wandering over to her desk. “Is the Imperial Suite available for my dear sister?”

“Unfortunately,” the Ambassador replied, setting her quill down as she gave the Inquisitor her attention. “The Marquise Hedinelle is staying in the Imperial Suite.”

Aidan crossed his arms, clearly unhappy he wasn’t getting his way. “Well, perhaps the Marquise could be moved?”

“I’m afraid not,” Josephine said carefully. “The Imperial Suites were the only accommodations acceptable. Her Grace has _terrible_ allergies, you see.”

“Yes Maker forbid the Marquise have to sneeze during her stay,” Aidan muttered, rolling his eyes.

Nora put her hand on her brothers arm once again, silently willing for him to shut up. “What rooms are available Josephine?”

“One of the Chevalier Suites overlooking the courtyard,” she answered. “I’m afraid we’re all  booked up right now, but we should have rooms open up as people depart for Halamshiral.”

“That will be fine,” Nora nodded, and squeezed Aidan’s bicep hard to keep him from arguing.

“Ow!”

“Mark me down for the Chevalier Suite before someone else claims it,” Nora requested, ignoring him.

“It is the first room on the right,” Josephine said with a smile. “Please let me know if there’s anything you require, my lady.”

“A bath and a few changes of clothes would be an excellent start,” Nora said meekly, knowing it had probably been a rhetorical question of sorts.

“I’ll see to it right away,” Josephine said anyway.

“I’ll make sure you get at _least_ a Princess Suite as soon as possible, sister,” Aidan promised as he led her through yet another door. As if she didn’t know her way around this place like the back of her hand. He gestured her towards the door opposite, on the other side of the Great Hall. “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Aidan, I’m not one of your nosy dignitaries,” Nora said quietly. “You don’t have to placate me. I’m here to work, not be pampered.”

“Well in that case,” he chuckled. “I believe there’s some room in the stables. Since you love the horses so much.”

Nora turned her head to give him a lazy glare, before proceeding ahead of him up the stairs. “I have some aversion to the elements,” she pointed out.

“I thought mages liked elements.”

“Have you _always_ been such a smartass?”

“No, it started coming in around the same time as my beard.”

“How in the world have you garnered _any_ allies?”

“Some people find me witty and charming, you know.”

And then they were at the first room overlooking the courtyard. “Well, here we are, Chevalier Number One,” Aidan announced, impervious to the exasperated look on Nora’s face. She did the unthinkable and opened the door for herself.

The room looked about the same as she remembered. A couple of small tables. A dresser… an ancient painting of a woman in a black dress. Some sort of candelabra made of a deer’s antlers. But at the moment all she really cared about was the huge bed covered in clean sheets. Compared to what she had at the Circle, this bed and this _room_ was fit for a queen.

“Make yourself at home,” Aidan insisted behind her. “And really, sister, if there’s anything you need, you know that I’ll move the skies and the seas.”

She turned to face him, surprised by his sudden earnestness. “Thank you,” was all she could manage to say.

“Will you be joining us for Wicked Grace tonight?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. I think I’ll take a nap first, then see how I feel.”

 _“Naps?”_ Aidan scoffed, holding up both his hands in mock-bewilderment. “I don’t believe we have those in the Inquisition.”

“Well that will certainly be my first order of business, after I usurp your throne,” Nora teased.

“Aha, I knew it!” her brother declared, playing along as he took a step towards her. “A sloth demon!”

As she giggled at him, a knock at the door interrupted their banter. “Yes?” Nora called.

“Your bath, milady," came a voice muffled by the door.

“Come,” Nora answered. “If you’ll excuse me, brother,” she said as two servants with a tub shuffled into the room.

“I’ll leave you to it. And I do expect to see you for the game tonight,” he said, wagging his finger as he walked backwards towards the door. “Even if it won’t be as exciting as it might have been. You just had to warn Cullen didn’t you?” he complained.

 _“Good afternoon,_ Your Worship,” she said pointedly, dismissing him without disrespecting him in front of the servants.

Aidan threw up his hands. “Alright, alright, I’m going…”

* * *

Nora soaked in the bath until her fingers and toes turned to prunes, delighting in feeling truly clean for the first time in weeks. And then there was the scent of oils and soap, which smelled like a distinctly Orlesian bouquet to Nora's nose, though she couldn't name any particular flower or fruit.

Even having fresh, clean towels seemed like a luxury after so long on the road. After drying off, Nora wrapped one around her hair and then went about inspecting the clothing Josephine had scrounged up for her. Along with some other basic necessities: hair brush, comb, underwear, quill, parchment, some perfume, and a small bottle of olive oil, which had various uses of course.

Josephine really did think of everything, didn't she?

She wasn't sure whose closet the ambassador had raided, perhaps a mixture of Leliana's and her own, which told Nora something, though she wasn't sure what. As such, Nora had her choice of two pairs of trousers, one grey and one brown, a teal day dress made of ring velvet with royale-sea-silk sleeves, and three blouses of various colors and styles. Nora chose the top that was closest to her tastes: an embroidered waistcoat the color of charcoal, which Josie had paired with a satin shirt in deep purple. The lighter grey trousers seemed to go well with it also, so Nora pulled those on underneath.

Resolving to commission a new wardrobe as soon as she could afford it, she ran a comb through her hair and then sat down at the table to write the first of several letters.

She really did need to inform her parents that she wasn't dead. That was the easy part. Explaining how exactly she came to be... not dead... was quite a complicated matter. Even if it had been wise, she did not think she had enough parchment to tell the whole story. But what should she say? That news of her death was just a rumor? Believable enough. That she would explain everything the next time she was in Ostwick? That might not be for some time.

While she was deliberating with herself on what to write, there was another gentle knock on her door. “Stroud?" came a male voice she didn't quite recognize. "You in there?”

Setting her quill in its holder, she stood and hurried over to the door, opening it only a few inches. “Sorry, this isn’t Stroud’s room any --" she startled as the young man's familiar and ruggedly handsome face peered in at her. "--more…”

“Oh, forgive me for disturbing you, ma’am," he said with a tilt of his head and a friendly smile. "I didn’t realize I had a new neighbor.”

Nora felt like all the air had been knocked out of her lungs, and it took a moment for her to think of a reply. “S-Stroud’s gone to Weisshaupt," she managed, and the young man's expression went despondent. "Were you expecting word from him?”

“I -- yes, I was," the young man admitted, more nervous than he'd been a moment ago. "Do you know him?” he inquired cautiously.

Nora just nodded and opened the door the rest of the way, beckoning the man, who was carrying a cake apparently, inside. Once the door was shut, she turned to him, wringing her hands as she struggled with where to begin.

“I’m Nora Trevelyan," she explained to start. "The Inquisitor’s sister.”

The young man's eyes shot open in surprise. “Oh! How do you do, my lady? I’m Felix, of House Alexius," he said, and gave her a courtly bow.


	5. I would keep myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aha, so unfortunately some revelations from the new lore book (don't worry no spoilers here) have completely messed up my headcanons about Felix... but the way that I wrote him originally is too essential to the story for me to change it now, so you'll just have to bear with me on that. I have no problem with the way Felix turned out in canon. It's just that I couldn't have had any idea when I stitched this plot together a couple months ago, and he is one of the top five most important characters in the story.

Felix.

Alexius.

Nora barely kept herself from gawking as Felix introduced himself, bowing and then straightening, all the while carefully balancing the plate with his cake on it.

"How do you do?" Nora replied with a small curtsy, instead of asking _'How are you alive?'_ like she wanted, with _'Why are you holding a cake?'_ being a distant second place.

"Dorian told me something of your… situation," Felix said with sympathetic eyes.

“Ah. Good, that will make this easier then," she chuckled. "It so happens, that my situation is also Stroud’s situation. He came through the rift with me.”

Felix frowned thoughtfully. “I see.”

“In the world where we came from," Nora winced. "You were... dead. I’m sorry.”

The Tevinter's expression darkened even more, eyes focusing on some worry deep inside himself. “So… Stroud doesn’t know to send word to me?” he lamented.

“I sincerely doubt he knows who you are at all.”

Felix was quiet for a long moment, staring down at his cake. “Hmm.”

“Is something wrong? Something I can help with, perhaps?” Nora offered.

“No…" Felix answered uncertainly. "No, I think I’ll have to figure this one out on my own.”

Obviously there was something Felix didn't want to talk about. She looked for a way to change the subject, and the delicious smell of the pastry in between them seemed the perfect opportunity. “Is that… carrot cake?”

“Ah, yes," Felix said, mouth turning upwards in a self-deprecating smirk. "It’s just, I recently developed the most ravenous appetite, so I usually get a snack from the kitchens in the afternoon."

Nora giggled. "You must have gotten in good with the kitchen staff to walk off with whole cakes."

"No small feat as a 'Vint, let me tell you," he chuckled, making her giggle even more.

Felix just looked at her for a moment, a sort of hopeful smile on his face, eyes just barely flickering over her form. Nora felt herself blush, heart clenching as he realized she was being admired. _I’m with Cullen,_ she reminded herself, except that she wasn’t. Not in this place, not anymore, and a small pulse of despair overtook her, which thankfully Felix mistook for interest in the cake.

"Oh, um," he coughed, then held the plate out to her. "Would you like some?”

She caught herself biting her lip as she fought the temptation to ruin her dinner, and pressed her lips tightly together instead. "I'm quite famished myself actually,” she admitted.

“Well then let me slice you a piece,” Felix insisted. “Shall I set it down over here?” he asked, wandering over to the desk.

“Oh, yes, let me just--” she said, hurrying over to move her letter out of the way. Felix pulled a knife out of his belt and used it to cut her and himself a slice of the cake. She took up a seat on her bed, and he pulled up a nearby chair.

“You do look... very healthy,” she said between bites, noting that he’d gained weight, and the dark circles were almost gone from his eyes. “The last I heard, you were, ah… quite ill.”

“Yes, I was,” Felix replied, not quite meeting her eyes as he brushed a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “I got better…” he said cryptically, almost a joke but not quite, and it was clear that was going to be the end of that conversation. So Nora just awkwardly picked at her slice of cake, holding it in her right hand and taking off pieces carefully with her left.

“You’re injured?” Felix commented, somehow just noticing the splint on her arm.

“Oh. Yes… broken wrist,” Nora explained with a shrug. “Happened at Adamant.”

“Would you like me to take a look?” Felix offered, pointing at her wrist. “I have some skill as a healer.”

"You can heal _bone?"_ she asked, eyebrow quirking up in skepticism, to which Felix just shrugged innocently.“Yes, alright,” she shrugged back.

He stood up to put the rest of his cake away and wash his hands in the small pitcher of water on the dresser. Nora just watched, mind still shuffling through a myriad of questions. Had Felix been a healer in the other version of the world? Dorian had never mentioned. Could he have just… healed himself of the Blight? Surely it wasn’t that simple. But here he was, plain as day, alive, dressed in simpler robes than she had seen him in at Redcliffe: grey cotton and lined with leather, cowl draped over his shoulders but without the horns. Working clothes. Not something as flashy as what Dorian would wear, but Tevinter fashion all the same.

Felix brought the chair closer to where she was sitting on the bed, and sat down in front of her. She held out her wrist, palm up, and he studied it a moment before gesturing to the splint. “Do you mind if I--”

She shook her head. “Not at all.” Felix retrieved his knife from his belt and gingerly cut the tight bandages that kept her from bending or moving the injury. He cast a quick spell in its place, paralyzing her hand while he removed the last of the fabric and wood.

“Alright keep it straight for me,” he requested, removing the spell and holding her arm in place, just enough support that she wouldn’t tire. “Wiggle your fingers?”

Nora tried to comply, wincing in the process. “Hurts,” she croaked.

Felix nodded sympathetically. “Close your eyes. Focus your mind on the pain.”

She did so, trying to keep her hand from shaking, because she had some ridiculous need to impress him with being brave.

She could feel Felix drawing upon magic, a spell that smelled like cold mist, and gave Nora the sensation that if she opened her eyes, she would be floating in clouds. She wanted to sneak a peek, to see what it was exactly he was doing, but he admonished her with a quiet “Focus.” So she just cleared her mind of everything but the throbbing in her wrist. His soft fingers turned her hand over without comment, and then somehow he managed to find the exact spot where she was hurting. She hissed as he pressed ever so slightly, hardly more than a touch.

“Hmm. You have a fractured ulna,” Felix declared.

“A what?” she replied, only daring to open one eye.

“That’s the name of the bone in your arm,” Felix answered with a smirk. “You can open your eyes now.”

“Can you mend it?”

“Absolutely,” Felix answered, and then began drawing upon magic again, this time something that reminded her of grapefruit and glowed a bright blue.  “Though I wish you would have come seen me sooner,” he chuckled, and sent a tingly ray of magic into her skin.

Nora grunted, but didn't bother thinking of a witty retort, figuring it would be better not to distract him. She was fascinated by the prospect to learn about a new spell. Felix seemed to be using some sort of Spirit magic, and she could feel... _something_ going on inside her bone.

Felix continued casting for the better part of an hour, alternating between detecting the wound and healing it, before he finally looked up, a bit of sweat collecting on his brow. "Try moving your fingers again."

Nora reluctantly closed and opened her hand a few times, and sensing no pain, she decided to try bending her wrist. To her surprise, it didn't hurt at all. Her muscles were stiff from lack of use, but she seemed to have recovered the complete range of motion.

“Better?” Felix asked.

“Yes," Nora said thoughtfully. "It sort of… itches?”

“Yeah, it does that," Felix reassured. "I didn't heal it all the way, only most of the way.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too easy to overheal bones. We’ve found that it makes them brittle, and more likely to fracture again in the future," he explained. "So you want to mend it until it’s a few days shy of fully healed. I can also show you some exercises to help it from getting stiff.”

Nora glared at him incredulously. “Some skill as a healer, Felix? Just some.”

He pulled his mouth into a guilty smirk. “I was being modest," he admitted.

She couldn't help but laugh at that. “I didn’t know Tevinters knew how to do that!”

“If you’ve only spent time with Dorian, I can understand why," he chuckled. "Anyway, you’ll want to protect it for a few more days. No heavy lifting, or punching people in the face, or anything like that.”

“What about playing cards?” she asked, still testing her wrist, bending it back and forth.

“That should be fine. Provided you don’t bang your fist on the table when you lose," Felix teased.

 _"'When?'"_ Nora arched up a brow, regarding him warily. “Is that a challenge, Lord Felix?”

“Hey, I didn’t say you’d be losing to me," he said, throwing up his hands."I’m rubbish at cards.”

"It's not possible to be rubbish at cards, is it?" Nora argued, giving him a teasing and suspicious smile. "It's all just luck. Luck and keeping a straight face."

"Well then fortunately for me," Felix smiled, leaning a hand on his thigh. "My name literally means luck."

Absent-mindedly clutching at the pendant she had hidden beneath her shirt, she narrowed her eyes, considering that, and the fact that this young man had found some unspoken way to cheat death itself. "Remind me not to bet against you," she said, and both of them shared another laugh.

* * *

“Oh, it’s Lefty’s turn to deal,” Varric realized, as The Iron Bull set the deck of cards in front of Nora. “This should be interesting.”

“Deuces, aces, and one-eyed faces,” Nora announced. “And don’t worry. It’s not like I can predict _everything_ that’s going to happen,” she smirked and started flicking cards around the table. First to Cullen, who had sat beside her, to her great delight, and then over to Varric. Josie and Cassandra sat at the end of the table opposite The Iron Bull, who got a whole end to himself.

On the other side of the table were Aidan and Dorian -- as always being less subtle than they thought they were being -- and then Felix was across from her, digging his fork into his late night snack of pork ribs from the tavern’s kitchen. The man never did stop eating, it would seem, even if he did manage to do it with the utmost of high Tevinter society manners.

Cullen leaned over slightly, not quite bumping shoulders with her as he looked at her hands. “Are you really left handed?” he murmured to her.

(“Sure you don’t wanna play, Chuckles?” Varric was calling out to Solas, who sat over by the fire, plucking a pleasant tune on a lute.

“I’m quite alright just observing, thank you,” the elf answered.)

Nora shook her head, giving Cullen an amused smile. “He’s just talking about this,” she explained, pointing to her now lightly-bandaged hand.

“Oh, of course,” Cullen said with a breathy chuckle, wincing in slight embarrassment. “How is your hand doing, by the way?”

“Loads better now. I had Felix take a look at it,” Nora said, nodding to the mage across the table. “Patched me right up.”

With a nod of his own head, Cullen regarded Felix, whose mouth was too full of pork to join the conversation. “He’s brilliant isn’t he? I’ve lost count of how many men owe Felix their lives.”

“Naturally,” chimed in Dorian, who had apparently been listening in to the exchange. “Felix was first in his class, at the Circle of Teraevyn, which has the most prestigious College of Thaumaturgical Medicine in the Imperium,” he bragged, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “A perfect marriage of sorcery and science.”

“It’s the _only_ College of Thaumaturgical Medicine in the Imperium,” Felix grumbled, staring at his cards, but with a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Only because no one wants to compete with them,” Dorian insisted. “Felix was also offered a position within the Archon’s household. Second Physician, was it?” he asked, looking to Felix for confirmation, which was given with a struggled nod, as Felix’s mouth was already full again.  “Which he turned down, for some reason,” Dorian said, rolling his eyes.

“How could you pass up that kind of opportunity?” Nora inquired.

Felix swallowed and shrugged. “It’s not First Physician, is it?” he said dryly.

“Well, you’ve got to give yourself _something_ to aspire to,” Josephine protested gently from the end of the table, as she threw in her ante to the pot.

“I was just joking,” Felix reassured the ambassador. “It was actually because I thought it would be boring.”

Aidan leaned over to see around Dorian, hugging his cards to his chest. “You thought healing the most powerful man in the Imperium would be _boring?_ You’d literally have your fingers on the pulse of the Empire. _Literally.”_

“Well, see, that was the problem,” Felix explained, wiping his hands on a cloth napkin before picking up his cards. “A powerful man like that wouldn’t listen to his physician’s advice. He’d just do whatever he wanted to do. I’d rather be where I can actually help people. I thought about joining the army and going to Seheron, but… Father wouldn’t have it,” he ended quietly, expression drooping.

Iron Bull grunted at that, braver than anyone else at the table when it came to broaching delicate subjects. “Trust me when I say that’s just as well,” he said gruffly. “You didn’t miss out on anything there.”

Nora turned to the Commander, sensing they needed to shift away from that conversation and back to the game. “Ser Cullen?” she prodded, and he met her gaze with nervous eyes. “Are you in or out?”

Cullen frowned at his hand for another moment. “Oh, to the Void with these cards. I'm out,” he groused, throwing them down on the table.

“See, I've never understood that sentiment,” Dorian pondered. “If you send something to the Void, then it's no longer a Void. It doesn't make any sense."

"Perhaps things stop existing when they enter the Void,” Cassandra theorized. Nora sifted through the cards in her hand, trying not to think about it, and failing. _Dark. Falling. Dark. Falling._

"Then why is the Void such a scary place?” Dorian argued, shaking his head at the Seeker. “Wouldn’t it be a lot scarier if you were aware of the fact you were the only thing there? But then everyone would have to have their own personalized Voids. I simply can’t believe such a place exists, on account of logistics if nothing else."

"It does exist,” Nora said quietly, and felt every eye on the table turn to her, even though she herself was still staring at her cards.

"...And how do you know?" came the Seeker’s voice from the end of the table.

Nora considered just dropping it, because surely they wouldn’t believe her. Except they would. In this circle of people where impossible things happened, it was the only place she would ever be believed. "I've been there,” she replied.

The statement hung heavy in the air for a few moments, but just as she suspected, no one dared to question it. "Well, what was it like?" Josephine said finally, her voice trembling with curiosity.

Nora forced herself to put down her cards and look around the table, all of the eyes looking at her with worry or thinly-veiled suspicion. "It's really difficult to put into words,” she shrugged. “In our world, we have things that are physical, things that are emotional, spiritual, et cetera. Those distinctions don't exist in the Void,” she explained, still speaking low to keep her voice from shaking. “Everything is… of one substance. Everything is everything. And everything is nothing.”

That garnered a few confused looks from the three boys across the table so she kept going. Over by the fire, the sound of the lute abruptly stopped, making it easier for her to hear herself over her pounding heart. “It was as if all that had ever existed… anything that had a beginning and an end… once it ended, it went to the Void. And I was falling through all of it. But I had no eyes, so I couldn't see. I couldn't reach out with my senses. I couldn't think or move. All I could do was just... fall."

"Forgive my skepticism, my lady,” Solas spoke up. “But the elven legends indicate that the Void can drive even gods to madness. Surely no mortal could survive such a place."

“There was someone there with me,” Nora said quickly, because it was the only explanation that she had. This assertion, too was met with silence.

She could feel the intensity of Cullen’s gaze, and she slowly turned her eyes, meeting his without moving her head. “Who?” he almost whispered, looking so concerned it broke her heart a little.

“I don’t know,” she replied, shrugging an apology. “I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t… tell. I just knew he was trying to protect me. To comfort me.”

“So, not another mortal then?” Dorian interjected, mind working a million miles an hour as usual. “Then, what? A god?”

“The Maker?” Cassandra breathed reverently.

Nora let an inelegant snort escape her, breaking the trance her tale had induced on the entire table. “No,” she scoffed, raising one skeptical eyebrow. “No no no.”

“How do you know?” her brother insisted.

“I don’t know.”

“Well then you have to admit it might have been the Maker,” Aidan said, gesturing definitively with his upward-turned palm.

“N-no?” Nora answered, backed into a corner and unable to think of an argument.

 _“But how do you know?”_ Josephine repeated, emphatic as she leaned in to the table even more.

“I just… do!” Nora stammered, heart sinking as she watched most of the faces at the table give her doubtful looks. Everyone except the Iron Bull, who looked confused, and Varric, who looked like he found the whole thing entertaining.

Meanwhile, Aidan was preening. “Aha! Our resident agnostic, stumped,” he declared, leaning in as if to taunt her.

“Careful, Lefty,” Varric warned with a devious smile. “You keep telling stories like that, and they'll start calling you a prophet.”

Nora frowned. “I would really prefer if they didn’t,” she muttered, trying to turn her concentration back to her cards.

“Well, you know what they say.” She could hear the smirk on Dorian’s face. “Prophet in the streets, profane in the sheets.”

Lips pressing together and trying not to laugh, Nora watched as Felix turned to his countryman with darkened eyes. _“No one_ says that,” he scolded mildly.

 _“They do now,”_ Josephine and The Iron Bull giggled at once.

“No one has ever, _ever_ said that,” Cullen concurred, giving Dorian an almost pitying and very disappointed glare. “And frankly, Dorian, I think you owe the lady an apology.”

The room went silent once again, as everyone turned to watch Dorian react to this. He froze and looked at Cullen, eyebrows shooting up only a sliver, staring at the Commander in this _how dare you_ kind of way before his expression melted, and he glanced over at the supposedly offended party. “I--”

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Nora quipped, shrugging at Cullen and making her following smirk a careful balance between sin and forgiveness. The tension broke and the whole table table burst into laughter, except for Cullen of course. Nora just leaned over, bumping shoulders with him as a conciliatory gesture. She allowed herself to revel in the slight shifts of emotion on his face: from worried, to embarrassed, to slightly pleased with himself, to blushing as he perhaps realized her comment was for his benefit. And then maybe a little more pleased with himself. All expressions that she had written on her heart from another life. It made her sad, but also a little hopeful.

Nora felt herself blush a little, too, as she looked back at her cards, and Varric finally urged the lot of them to get back to their game before someone challenged someone to a duel.


	6. Upon my liar's chair

What more could Aidan possibly ask for, sitting on his couch in front of the crackling fireplace, sun rising over the mountains, his lover nestled against his side with a hot breakfast sprawled out before them. Fittingly picturesque for a scene that did nothing to stave off the turmoil that was stirring inside him.

This was the first mission he would embark on without the title 'Herald of Andraste' cloaking him with the courage of a righteous cause. And the first mission in a long while, that he would face without Dorian by his side. He was dressed in his armor and ready to depart, but still he felt strangely naked and vulnerable, empty in a way that food could never fill.

“Mm…” Dorian practically moaned into his mug of coffee. Aidan just gave him a look as the heat rose in his cheeks at the husky sound, certain that Dorian was doing it on purpose, trying to fill the awkward quiet with more than just the sound of forks scraping over ceramic plates.

Dorian's satin housecoat was the color of spring leaves, and he'd let it fall open to reveal his chest, almost all the way down to his navel. His birthright amulet and a dark love bite peeked out from underneath, the latter something to remind Dorian of their last night together until their next night together. “This coffee is so good. I kind of want to have sex with it,” the mage admitted.

“Good, you’ll have something to keep you company while I’m away,” Aidan teased with a nasty smile. He held up his own mug and sniffed at the steam, managing a small hum of delight at the dark, rich aroma. “From Magister Livius Erimond’s personal supply cache. Recovered from Adamant,” he noted.

Dorian made an interested sound, then offered his mug up for a toast. “To victory.”

“To victory,” Aidan agreed, clinking his cup against Dorian’s.

After they both drank, Dorian turned his attention back to his breakfast, a plate full of toast covered with cinnamon, and eggs, which he'd sprinkled both salt and sugar onto for some reason. “Find anything else good?” he inquired in his walking-over-eggshells voice. Aidan tried to brace himself against that, and convince himself that the only elephant in the room was the fact they were about to be apart from each other for longer than they ever had been, since starting their relationship.

Aidan nodded as he swallowed some of the admittedly delicious coffee. “Some robes?” he answered. “You’re welcome to them if you want….”

“Ugh,” Dorian groaned. “I think they’d be more to Solas’s taste, honestly.”

Aidan grunted at that. “And some knives, which were probably some sort of ceremonial blood magic daggers,” he guessed.

“You know, not _all_ knives,” Dorian said with a sleepy glare. “From Tevinter. Are ceremonial blood magic daggers. It _may_ have just been silverware."

“Well at the very least, from the blood stains, Lord Erimond preferred his steak rare,” Aidan retorted, grinning at Dorian so the mage couldn’t be mad at him for being right.  

“Hmm, touché,” Dorian intoned and then took another sip of coffee. He closed his eyes as he did and then opened them slowly, enjoying the coffee sensuously in a way that was threatening to make Aidan jealous.

He pivoted in his seat and leaned down to press his mouth over the mage’s pulse, taking in the lingering scents of last night's wine and sex and cologne. “I’m going to miss you,” he murmured.

“Of course you are,” Dorian said, not taking his attention away from his breakfast, playing hard to get as always, even when his lover was about to leave for two weeks. Aidan's stomach was tying itself in knots trying to figure out why Dorian had asked to stay behind. But he ignored that in favor of brushing his fingers under the mage's robe, mapping out his skin since Dorian's heart was still an uncharted island.

“I have something to ask of you, though.” Aidan built up to his request with more kisses on Dorian’s neck. “While I’m gone.”

“Oh goodness,” Dorian huffed. “Is this where I pledge my undying fidelity? Promise not to let even my eyes wander? Well it _will_ be a hardship but I suppose I shall endure,” he sighed dramatically, finally looking at Aidan with a hand over his heart. “It helps somewhat that you’re the most good-looking man in the keep, and really in the whole world, there are none who are your equal.”

Aidan couldn’t help but give him an incredulous smile, recognizing the tactical, rambling diversion for what it was. “That’s… not quite where I was going with that.”

“Oh,” Dorian said, expression suddenly blank.

“But that’s good to know,” Aidan reassured him, trying not to laugh. “I suppose I shall be... 'enduring' as well.”

“Well,” Dorian nodded sharply, as usual trying to act like caring was beneath him. “Good.”

“I was just going to ask that you look after my sister,” Aidan explained.

Dorian side-eyed him while he scooped up some eggs with his fork. “Does she require looking after?”

“No, I just…” Aidan sighed, unsure of how to explain himself without sounding paranoid. “Just make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble. Please?”

As usual Dorian saw right through him, even if he would never come out and say so. “What if she’s the one starting the trouble?”

“That too.”

Dorian acquiesced with a tiny, unconcerned shrug. “Alright. Although I rather think she’ll have little birdies watching her every move…” he pointed out, a single finger brushing crumbs out of his mustache. “I’ll do my best to be roguishly sneaky as well as handsome.”

Aidan rewarded his cooperativeness with another kiss, this one on his temple. “Thank you.”

“But I have something to ask in return," Dorian added, voice dark and serious.

“Anything," Aidan mumbled, brushing wet, open lips against the other man's skin.

“Stay the fuck away from red lyrium," the mage growled, and Aidan pulled away, wincing at him.

“Anything but _that…_ " he fretted, as Dorian ominously shook his head. "That’s sort of the reason we’re going.”

“And here you're worried about your sister getting into trouble," Dorian said, rolling his eyes. "When you'll be frolicking about in the most terrifying substance on the face of Thedas.”

“I am completely aware of the dangers," Aidan chuckled nervously, apologizing with his eyes for something he hadn't even done.

“I swear if you come back glowing red, I will not be pleased," Dorian continued to scold through his teeth. "And _you're_ not going to be pleased either, if you know what I mean," he warned, giving Aidan a glare he'd thought was only reserved for Dorian's family members. Or at least, he only seen it directed at the one family member he'd met so far.

“I’m pretty sure that to glow red, I’d have to actually ingest the stuff," he argued, if only to be difficult.

His lover gave him a look, eyes cutting to the side as he hid the rest of his face behind another sip of his coffee. A look that said he wasn't exactly putting it past Aidan to do just that.

He barely kept himself from scowling. “If you have something to say, say it plainly," he sighed, making his tone a disinterested sort of disappointment, like his parents used to affect when he'd misbehaved, or when their guests said something unsavory over tea. "I don’t have time for your subtlety today, Dorian.”

Another look, but then Dorian's hand was on his thigh, comforting, placating. “All that I’m asking…" Dorian said softly. "Is that you come back in one piece. Mentally _and_ physically.”

Aidan's mouth became a crooked smirk as he thought of a diversionary retort. “Mmm, you know I’ll go to pieces just being away from you," he drawled.

Dorian rolled his eyes again and made a disgusted noise, and grumbled something about 'impossible', but he let Aidan kiss him all the same.

* * *

Whoever was knocking on her door was doing it entirely too loud. Nora shut her eyes tighter and rolled over, hoping they would just go away. Another set of knocks, and then the door was opening, her brother’s voice luckily wafting in because she probably would have shot lightning at anyone else.

“Sister?” he called. She didn’t bother to acknowledge him or even move. “Now what’s this? Not even out of bed yet?”

“Mmmmmmm…” she groaned in a way that could only be described as petulant. She was allowed to be petulant now. She wasn’t the Inquisitor anymore. And she had a headache.

“You alright?”

“Just… exhausted,” she yawned. “A little hung over.”

“Well, I suppose you’ve earned a lie-in.”

“How gracious,” she croaked, and finally turned in the sheets to face him, blinking against the light from outside, her brother’s tall, armored form nothing more than a silhouette.

“I just came by to tell you I was leaving.” Aidan had some kind of parchment rolled up into a scroll, and he was fidgeting with it, twisting it in his hands as he spoke.

“Where to? Close the door please.”

“The Emprise du Lion. Have a keep to capture. You been there?” he said, as he leaned against the door to shut it.

“No,” she answered, wracking her brain and blindly smoothing at her hair which was likely sticking up unattractively. “But my scouts said it was covered in... red lyrium.”

“That’s what my scouts say as well.”

 _“Be careful,”_ Nora scolded, her voice little more than air. “Who’re you taking with you?”

“Let see…” he pondered. “Solas, Vivienne, and Sera.”

Nora cocked her head to the side, confused. “You’re not taking Dorian?”

“No…?” Aidan laughed. Nora remembered from the night before it was one of his tells. Aidan had a bad hand, apparently. “If you’ve spent any time with him at all, you know he hates cold places. And the Emprise is colder than most. Besides, Suledin Keep is an old elven fortress. I figured Solas might like to study it.”

“Alright,” Nora said to dismiss the subject, having received the only explanation she was likely to get.

Aidan took another step into the room, pressing his lips together. “You have any plans?”

“Not really.”

“Just going to stay in bed forever?”

“I hadn’t decided.”

“Well... take care of yourself,” Aidan entreated. “I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

“You do the same. We can’t have you showing up to the Grand Ball on crutches,” she reminded him.

“I’ll be careful. Farewell...” he said, and then he was gone.

 

* * *

Nora finally peeled herself out of bed and got dressed, with the intent of finishing and sending her letters from the previous day. The one to her parents of course, and then one to the Order of Knight Enchanters, with a brief explanation of her situation, and that she had received training and wished to be added to their registry of knights. Vivienne was listed as a reference with her permission. Nora wasn’t sure what the answer would be, but it was a start anyhow.  

The only thing left to do was make the trip up the tower to send the birds. As usual, she regarded the mural in the bottom level with a smile, spinning around to check on Solas’s progress… but then an unexpected anomaly stopped her in the middle of the room like a punch to the gut.

One panel, which had formerly represented her rescue and alliance with the Templars, was replaced with something completely different: twin images of Redcliffe, to represent where Aidan had defeated the elder Alexius and recruited the mages. It was Aidan’s mural now, Nora realized, and she may as well have been falling through the Void again for how the feeling was falling out of her veins.

Stumbling, she took several steps back, toward the couch that was supposed to be against one wall. She looked behind her just to make sure, unsure she could trust anything anymore, even furniture placement. She carefully set herself upon it, certain that if she didn’t sit down that she might actually pass out.

Unaffected by her crisis, life went on above her, library workers murmuring as they organized papers and tomes, crows flapping their wings and cawing their displeasure whenever someone got too close. Nora felt entirely invisible, as if she had been erased from history altogether, and in a way she had. And while that truth had been evident ever since she’d fallen out of the rift, the deviation of the mural hit hard. How much had she taken for granted? Those had been _her_ accomplishments, _her_ conquests, _her life._

Feeling eyes upon her, Nora looked up to see Dorian leaning over the railing, brow furrowed with guarded concern. He tilted his head to the side, and their eyes locked on each other for a few heartbeats, before he turned and walked around towards the stairs.

Utterly deflated and weak, all Nora could do was wait for him to join her, staring at the Redcliffe panel of the mural, like it was an icon that could answer some kind of desperate and reverent and unspoken prayer.

Dorian emerged from the stairwell and sat beside her, speaking no words but saying enough with just his presence alone. Dorian had never been good with these types of situations, Nora knew, but when he tried, it meant the person really meant something to him. And that was enough of a comfort in and of itself.

They sat there for a long time, with the other mage glancing back and forth between her and the mural, concern written plainly into his features even if Nora only saw out of the corner of her eye.

Finally Nora found the strength to speak. “I know this isn’t the story of my life anymore, but it’s like _the story of my life_ you know?” she said with a desperate laugh, close to crying.

Dorian snorted in quiet sympathy. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

Nora looked down at her knees and stared, digging up hurts long buried in her heart. “I was born into a noble family. Second in line to inherit a bannorn. The Teyrn’s son was about the same age as me. There were talks, even though I was just a child, that perhaps we would be a good match. I might have been Teyrna someday. And then I came into my magic.”

“And they took your title away.”

“They took everything away except for the title. I was allowed to keep it as a courtesy when I was taken away to the Circle,” she answered, her voice low to prevent it from echoing to the upper floors of the tower, though it probably did anyway. “I cried about it for a few… _years…”_ she chuckled bitterly and looked over at her fellow mage. Dorian only answered this with a pained smile. “But then it turned out I was good at it. So I said to myself, I’m going to be the best mage I can possibly be. I will make Clan Trevelyan proud even here. One day I will have the run of this place. One day I’ll be First Enchanter.”

“Good on you,” Dorian said softly, nodding his encouragement.

“So I worked hard," she continued, each sentence a bitter effort followed by a shallow breath. "I passed my Harrowing. Became apprentice to Enchanter Lorcan himself, a _great_ honor. Became Enchanter myself. And then the Circles fell.”

“Hmm,” Dorian concurred, and she didn't blame him one bit for not knowing what to say.

“So then I joined the rebellion. Not with the intention of fighting or killing, mind you, but just… to set things _right_. And just when I finally, _finally_ put together a contingency of mages that I thought could come to a compromise with the templars… we went to the conclave--”

“And the conclave blew up,” Dorian finished for her.

She nodded at him. “And the conclave blew up,” she repeated. “And when I emerged, they gave me a title I didn’t even _want.”_

“Oh...” Dorian realized. "Resident agnostic."

Nora closed her eyes. “But what was I supposed to do? They needed me. I _hated_ being called that but peoples’ faith in me allowed me a longer reach. It opened doors. So I made the most of it. I tried to reach out to both the mages and the templars, tried to encourage peace, but in the end I could choose only one to help with the Breach. There wasn’t time.”

Dorian's head tilted to the side, as if reminded of a heavy grievance. “Why did you choose the templars?” he asked gently.

“Huh, because Alexius had _time magic?"_ she scoffed. "Because I figured whatever scheme we concocted to sneak up on him no matter how clever, he would just go back in time and use the second chance to thwart it. I fully intended to deal with him, with templar support once the Breach was closed, but I just couldn’t risk dying before that was done.”

“Fair enough," Dorian soothed, in a way that told Nora she was forgiven. "Luckily for us, Alexius didn’t have time to react. Though I wonder what became of him. In your version of things.”

“The Venatori got to Alexius before I did. They killed him and conscripted all the mages under his command and descended on Haven." Nora pressed her hand against her brow, head still wanting to swim as she looked at the painting of Redcliffe Castle. "I remember looking up at that river of torches coming down the mountain and thinking, 'I've failed them. I failed everyone.' And just because I managed to survive that enormous cock-up, they named me the Inquisitor.”

“And now you’re not even that," Dorian concluded helpfully.

“And now..." Nora sighed, still fighting tears. "I’m not even that. I just wonder… how many times must I go through this? How many times must I reinvent myself? How many times must I have my destiny ripped away from me and replaced with a new one? Lady, Mage, Enchanter, Rebel Leader, Herald, Inquisitor… what else is there? What must I aspire to next? To become a queen? A god? That would make me no better than our enemy.”

Dorian mulled all of this over for a few long moment, playing with the curled end of his mustache until he was ready to speak. “What occurs to me about all of these life changing events…" he started. "Are that all of them, are something that _happened_ to you. As opposed to a path that you chose. I know mages of southern Circles sometimes struggle with this concept, but… don’t you think your destiny should be of your choosing? Not something that is thrust upon you?”

“I... but then it wouldn't be destiny," Nora argued weakly.

"So you don't believe in the Maker, but you believe in some sort of force that is outside of your control, dictating your life?"

"I... well I certainly didn't choose to be born to a noble house, or choose to be born a mage," Nora pointed out. "Neither did you."

"True," Dorian conceded graciously. "But maybe we make our own destiny, out of what we do with what we're given. You can be whatever you want to be," he insisted optimistically, making a grand gesture at her with one hand. "Do whatever you want to do. By all means, stick around and help defeat Corypheus if you like. But after that? The world is your oyster."

"The world is my oyster," she laughed and sniffled at the same time. "W-What does that even mean?!"

Dorian gave her a bright, mischievous smile. "An instructor of mine once explained it thus: 'You are an insignificant, irritating speck of sand, that is on its way to becoming a radiant, priceless pearl.'"

Nora knew it was a joke, but pouted at him anyway. "Am I irritating?"

"I'm sure a certain sibling of yours would say yes," he teased. "But in all seriousness, sometimes you need to irritate the world, yes? Or how else is it supposed to be motivated to change?"

She narrowed her eyes at him even as she wiped the last of the tears away. "When did you get so good at giving advice?"

"Oh trust me, since I've b--" Dorian coughed over some word he hadn't meant to say. "Gotten to know your brother, Maker knows he needs all the help he can get. I've had to rise to the occasion."

"I'm sure you have," Nora retorted, as innocently as she could in the face of an innuendo that was no doubt supposed to go right over her head. To his credit, Dorian showed no sign of comprehension. "Though... he's not doing so terribly, I suppose."

Dorian leaned a little closer, his voice barely a whisper. "Between you and me, I'm glad you're here."

Nora leaned in closer too, brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Redcliffe…” Dorian hesitated and sighed, looking up at the mural. “Had an effect on him. Oh, he's not gone mad or anything. Just... he's... troubled. Being the world's only hope is quite the burden to bear, especially since he's seen what will happen should he falter."

“But that future will never come to pass,” Nora argued, shaking her head and gesturing at the redder of the two Redcliffes.

 _“I_ know that. _You_ know that. Him?” he shook his head.

There was a long moment where neither of them said anything. Then Dorian clicked his tongue. “Was I not good at giving advice before?” he inquired.

Nora shrugged and shook her head again. “Every time I was freaking out about something, you would just say, ‘Terribly sorry’ and change the subject or scurry away.”

“I have never scurried,” Dorian protested. “Not once in my entire life.”

“Alright, _walked briskly away,”_ Nora corrected herself.

“Well… giving advice to the Inquisitor… _is_ rather -- well -- daunting,” Dorian admitted.

“Oh I see,” Nora replied accusingly. “But now that I’m just a normal person--”

“Sure, I can give you all the advice you want,” he agreed with wide gesture of his hand. "Though I can't promise it will always be good advice," he added with a conspiratorial wink.

“Well, how about you start by showing me which birds the _normal_ people use to send correspondence,” Nora teased.

“Gladly! Right this way,” Dorian answered, and rose, taking Nora’s hand to help her off the couch. “Although if you need to expedite something you can always bribe Josie.”

“Bribe Josie?” Nora laughed. “With what?”

“Well, not really bribe, _per se,”_ Dorian continued as they ascended the stairs, but after that Nora stopped listening. Her mind was far, far away. If she was allowed to do anything, there was something -- or rather someone -- that was first on her list.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, everyone, is the end of act one! woo hoo!  
> There will be less crying in subsequent chapters. For a little while anyway. D:


	7. If I could start again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for this chapter: a brief discussion of suicidal thoughts.

On the following morning, Nora faced the mural in the tower again, this time only giving it a determined glance before striding out onto the bridge that led to Cullen's office. She pulled her dragonhide coat tighter around herself, partly for the cold and partly for courage.

She repeated the lines in her head a few more times, hoping to seem more confident when the time came to ask the Commander to join her for drinks. Her hands were shaking from nerves as she pushed open the door; even though she sensed a connection between herself and the Cullen of this world, there was still the possibility that she would manage to fuck everything up this time around. After all, she wasn't really sure what she had done to win him over in the first place.

Cullen glanced up at first with an _Oh Maker, who is it now_ sort of look before he saw her, and then his expression brightened considerably, posture straightening almost to attention from where he’d been bent over his desk. “Lady Trevelyan!” he welcomed her with a warm smile as she closed the door behind her, pushing it firmly into the frame, since that particular door liked to blow open when the winds became too strong.

She returned his smile and stepped forward. “It was sweet of you to try and defend my honor the other night at cards. I suppose that makes us even.”

Responding with a small chuckle, Cullen shifted his weight to one side and rested his palm on the pommel of his sword, looking every bit the dashing and slightly cocky warrior that she remembered. And he looked _happy_ , which kind of made her want to melt into a puddle on his floor. “I did owe you one, didn’t I?” he conceded with a tilt of his head. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

Approaching the desk, she giggled nervously as she remembered the night Cullen had run out of the tavern stark naked, and bit her lip when the real Cullen in front of her dipped his head, looking a bit pink and bashful about it.

“Maker’s breath,” he swore quietly, making her giggle even more.

It didn’t seem like the most opportune moment to broach the subject of their potential date, but that thought was stolen away anyway, as she saw a glimmer of worry pass across the Commander’s face. He looked away for a moment, contemplating before turning his attention back to her. “I’m always thankful to see you in good spirits,” he said softly. “Even if it’s at my expense. With everything you’ve been through… the Void and… everything else. Well, the phrase ‘made of Ostwicker steel’ has never seemed more appropriate,” he chuckled.

Before she even realized she was doing it, Nora reverted back to an old habit, wandering around to the other side of the desk, not really meeting Cullen’s eyes as she leaned back against it, half-sitting, half-standing, not even an arm's length away from him. Her heart jumped in her chest as she noticed what she'd done; it was so easy to get comfortable when he was talking to her like that. Like a _friend._

But Cullen didn’t seem to mind her being there, just turning to face her as she struggled for words. “You don’t know the half of it,” she sighed.

“I know enough to know I probably don’t want to know more,” he retorted, then paused, shifting on his feet. “I…” Cullen said cautiously. “I know I should probably just butt out, and say it’s none of my business, but...”

Nora turned her head, looking up into his eyes, unsure what he was on about. But he dipped his head down again and rubbed at his neck, avoiding her searching gaze. “I don’t like to think about what would have happened, if I hadn’t come to speak to you that morning. At the abyss.”

“Oh,” she replied, the memory knocking the wind out of her. “Right.”

Cullen licked his lips. Looked up at her, and then down to the ground. He seemed so concerned about her, she wanted to reach out and touch him, to cup his cheek into her palm, to press their foreheads together and swear to him that she wasn’t going anywhere. Even in this world, where they barely knew each other, had never fought beside each other or found refuge in each other's arms, his compassion for her was palpable, and it only made her fall even harder in love. She had to fix this. She had to get him back.

“I’ve been quite worried about you,” he admitted.

She shook her head, rooted in place by her heart going in too many directions at once. “I wasn’t trying to… end my life, you know. I know it must have looked that way,” she assured him, then chuckled at herself. “I had actually concocted a ridiculous plan to get back to my own timeline.”

Cullen met and kept her gaze then, brow furrowing at her in that way it did when she was up to no good. “Even after Solas and Dorian insisted that you shouldn’t,” he chided.

“Well… yes…” she stammered.

He snorted at her then, his laugh affectionate and relieved as he minutely shook his head and looked out the window. “You’re as hardheaded as your brother, you know that?” he said with a wry, wistful smile.

“Still, it probably is a good thing you intervened,” she shrugged.

He breathed another laugh and gave her a half-smile, nodding thoughtfully. “Well then I’m glad for it.”

Nora turned her whole body towards him and leaned sideways against the desk. She was so close to him that she could almost feel his warmth, and she could definitely catch the scent of the cologne that the older templars from her Circle had worn. Sera had once referred to it as 'old dad smell' but not unkindly. And then there was the down-to-earth bouquet of quill ink and the oil that Cullen used on his sword, which smelled slightly of cloves. Nora just wanted to smother herself in the comforting, familiar smell of him and never come up for air. “What about you?” she asked, twisting her hands together in front of her for lack of something else to do with them. “You seem to be in better spirits as well.”

Another breathy chuckle. “It’s actually just delirium and exhaustion,” he huffed. “I should have known better than to join an organization with an unsleeping eye as its logo,” he joked, making Nora cackle ungracefully, and Cullen smiled at her, quite pleased with himself. “But alas, it seems the Inquisition truly never sleeps, and I rarely do these days,” he griped, though he was still smiling. “I'm still catching up on things I should have been doing, instead of carousing at the tavern and losing at cards.”

To Nora's plans, it was like simultaneously putting water and another healthy log on a fire. No drinks at the tavern, then. Her heart sank, but at the same time she saw her way in. “Is there something I can do to help?” she offered.

Cullen turned back towards the desk and hung his head, as if it were weighted down by all of the piles of reports and requisitions that were scattered across the top of the table. “Dunno, you wouldn’t happen to be a dragonslayer, by chance…” he inquired sarcastically, pointing to one report at the top of the closest pile.

She barely kept herself from laughing out loud; instead she just stood a little straighter and dramatically cleared her throat as she made a show of brushing imaginary dust off her scaly white coat.

Cullen turned back to her, brow furrowing a little as realization set in. “You’re a dragonslayer.”

“Mmhm,” she preened. “I didn't get this fancy coat in Val Royeaux,” she said with a coy drawl, swaying back and forth a little to make the long tails swish.

Cullen’s eyebrows shot up. “That's the -- that's the hide of a wyrm you slew?!” he asked, pointing with a disbelievingly weak finger.

“Well, I had _help…”_ she shrugged, trying for modesty, as difficult as that was. “Now tell me about this dragon of yours.”

Cullen nodded, always able to snap back into a professional state of mind. “It’s been terrorizing our troops near the Crossroads. Oh _swords,_ where’s my map…” he grumbled, shuffling through papers.

Nora smiled big where he couldn’t see and on a hunch wandered over to the window, and sure enough, there was Cullen’s map scroll of the Hinterlands leaning against the outer wall. She snatched it up and then held it out for him until he looked over and noticed her holding it.

“Oh. Thank you,” he said, and then turned his head to the side as he gave her a curious look. “How did you -- right,” he answered his own question with another amused smile, and rolled the scroll open as he fought to compose himself against some very distracting thought. Nora just pressed her lips together to keep from beaming as they both looked down at the map. “Err... we think its lair is somewhere to the west--”

“It’s here,” Nora interrupted, brushing her arm against his as she leaned into his space to point at the quarry east of Redcliffe. “It’s a Fereldan Frostback. And it’s got babies.”

Cullen raised an anxious eyebrow at this information. “Maker’s breath,” he sighed.

Nora all but slapped a hand down on the desk, physically committing herself to her next words before she could change her mind. “I can take care of it for you,” she asserted. “I already have a team in mind actually. I can leave right away.”

Nodding at her slowly, Cullen studied her, visually testing her mettle. “Alright, _Trevelyan,”_ he challenged with a smirk, and damn it if Cullen weren’t particularly hot when he was issuing a challenge. And addressing her by her surname wasn’t doing anything to help the blush burning its way up her cheeks to her ears. “Allow me to welcome you as an official agent of the Inquisition’s army. You’ll report directly to me, as it were, as a hired sword. Or _staff_ I mean,” he fumbled, demeanor settling back on bashful. “You, uh, have my leave to recruit any other agents that are not otherwise occupied.”

Nora nodded, with some difficulty since there didn’t seem to be any blood in the rest of her body anymore, only her face and somewhere quite south of there. “I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, and turned towards the north door to head towards her first recruit.

“Oh, and Trevelyan?” Cullen called out to her, stopping her in her tracks.

She turned on her heel, heart pounding. “Yes?”

“M --” Cullen started, then changed his mind about whatever he was going to say. “Take care of yourself,” he said instead, barely managing to smile.

* * *

Her first stop was the tavern, where she strode over to The Iron Bull and pulled up a chair next to him, twirling it on one leg to sit in it backwards.

The Iron Bull sat up a little in his own seat and greeted her with a tilt of his horns. “Oh hey, bossette. Can I call you bossette?” he grinned at her.

“I like that,” she agreed, leaning against the back of the chair with both arms.

“What can I do for you?” the Qunari asked.

“I heard a rumor, The Iron Bull,” she began smugly, causing him to quirk up an eyebrow. “That you like dragons.”

The Bull’s smile grew wider, with an almost vicious glee. “I fucking _love_ dragons.”

She couldn’t help but beam at him. “I also heard a rumor, that you like hitting things,” she added, and ran her tongue along her top teeth, because it was quite difficult not to flirt a little with the Bull, especially knowing what she knew.

“I _love_ hitting things,” he almost purred at her, then narrowed his eyes in much the way Cullen had, suspecting mischief. “Why do I get the sense you’re about to tell my future?”

She chuckled. “There’s a dragon in the Hinterlands that’s been _very_ bad.”

“When do we leave?” Bull said at once.

“Do you have fire protection on your gear?” Nora inquired, and Bull shook his head.  “Go see Dagna, and meet me at the front gate in an hour.”

“Yes ma’am.”

* * *

 

The next stop was the practice dummies in the courtyard, where she knew would likely find her next recruit.

“Hello, Seeker,” she called out upon seeing the recruit in question, the warrior sitting on a wooden stump engrossed in an all-too-familiar book. Cassandra yelped and leapt up from her chair, quickly hiding the book behind her back.

“You scared me,” she sulked, giving Nora a severe look.

“Varric’s books are pretty enthralling, aren’t they?” Nora teased her.

 _“What?!”_ Cassandra squawked. “How do you know that--”

“Never mind,” Nora cut her off, waving a dismissive, _don’t worry about it_ hand. “I actually came to ask you about dragons.”

Cassandra’s frown became softer. “Oh. I suppose you want me to tell the story. It’s really not as interesting as it sounds.”

“Actually, I was hoping for a demonstration,” Nora explained.

“What do you mean?” the Seeker demanded, crossing her arms, all business now.

“There’s a high dragon in the Hinterlands that’s attacking our soldiers. Commander Cullen has enlisted my help to take it down. And I’d like to enlist you.”

“Oh,” Cassandra replied, looking conflicted. She had been the most reluctant to warm up to Nora in this new version of the world. She shrugged. “Well--”

“I could really use someone with your expertise,” Nora coaxed gently. She allowed Cassandra to think hard about it for a few moments, and then a few more, before clicking her tongue and impatiently throwing her weight to one hip. “Is the flattery working, or do I need to bribe you with the next chapter of Swords and Shields?”

* * *

Her final stop before going to retrieve her staff and other basic supplies was the second floor of the library, finding her last recruit in a familiar red chair in a nook by the window, head also buried in a book, just like Cassandra.

“Yes…?” he acknowledged her, without looking up.

“So. Dorian,” Nora said, fighting the corners of her mouth that wanted to smile with excitement.

“Mmhmmm?”

“How would you like to help me kill a dragon?” she offered as evenly as she could.

At that, Dorian slapped the book down onto his lap and gave her an incredulous glare. She let her eyes wander away but thanks to his black-lined eyes she could still see him blinking agitatedly at her in the periphery of her vision. “My dear lady,” he sighed. “When we had our talk the other day, and I told you that you could do anything you wanted, this wasn't really what I had in mind.”

She looked at him and shrugged innocently, and Dorian rolled his eyes and muttered something about ‘knowing that look’ under his breath. “Well, you know... baby steps,” she answered. Putting a finger under her chin, she turned her mind to the night before. “How was it that Josie put it? I need to give myself something to aspire to.”

“And what in the name of Andraste’s left buttcheek made you think of me for this _insignificant task?”_ Dorian groaned.

“Because I need another mage,” Nora shrugged. “And you’re the best mage in the keep,” she pointed out. She left out of course, that the other magically-inclined members of the inner circle were not _in_ the keep. Not that it mattered; Dorian was her favorite either way. Still, he deftly picked up on the slight dig at his talent and glared at her even more.

"I promised your brother I wouldn’t let you get into trouble,” was his next excuse.

“But it won’t be any trouble, Dorian!” she insisted, trying and failing not to sound like a child that wasn’t getting her way. “It’ll be fine! Listen. We’ve fought this dragon before, you and I. And we defeated it. And no one died,” she assured him. “Well. Except the dragon.”

Dorian thoughtfully brushed over his lips with the tips of his fingers. “Truly?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she nodded adamantly. “And dare I say… I think you had fun,” Nora smirked.

The other mage considered this for only a moment more before demanding, “Who else is coming?”

“Bull and Cassandra.”

Dorian chuckled at this revelation ruefully, looking up at the ceiling as if to ask someone up there to save him. “Oh, _delightful.”_

* * *

The four of them made good time getting to the East Road, took care of some bandits on their way, and then spent the night at the Inquisition camp at the edge of the quarry. Cassandra woke them all up early the next morning, serving each of them a portion of rabbit and vegetable stew and some skillet-baked biscuits. Sitting next to Nora, Dorian pursed his lips at the bowl and sniffed at it carefully. “Bit lacking in flair for a last meal,” he concluded jokingly.

Cassandra gave him a withering look. “It better not be your last,” she scolded. “You know if anything happened to you or the Inquisitor’s sister he would kill me.”

Dorian’s reaction to this slip of the tongue was subtle, but Cassandra’s was _not,_ and Nora saw the Seeker widen her eyes at something Dorian had tried to convey without Nora’s noticing. "Oh. Excuse me,” the Seeker said, and rose from her seat, wandering off somewhere in a hurry.

Nora let a few moments of awkward silence go by before speaking up. “It’s alright, Dorian. I know about you and my brother.”

Dorian looked up from his rabbit stew, looking about as shocked as he ever did, as good as he was at hiding it. “You do?” he replied with mild interest. “Well I suppose it was only a matter of time. What, or _who,_ finally gave us away?”

 _“Finally?”_ Nora scoffed with a hearty laugh.“I knew from the start.”

The other mage stuck out the tiniest amount of fat lip at that. “I thought we were being subtle.”

“You were,” Nora shrugged. “I’m just observant, is all.”

Dorian watched her as he blew at a spoonful of stew to cool it. “I take it this means you’re alright with it? Aidan was quite concerned you wouldn’t be,” he noted before taking a sip.

“My _brother_ forgets I grew up in a Circle,” she reminded him, as if that explained everything, because it did.

“Right,” Dorian agreed, closing his eyes as if to chastise himself for not remembering that.

Nora managed to let the two of them focus on eating for a little while, taking in the metaphorical calm before the storm in the stillness of the sunrise. But eventually her curiosity got the better of her, and there was not much else to talk about anyway, beside the dragon on the other side of the tunnel that Dorian was blissfully unaware of.  “So are things quite serious between the two of you, or are you just fooling around?”

Tilting his head to the side, Dorian carefully searched inwardly for the answer. “No, we’re in a relationship, apparently.”

“‘Apparently?’” Nora repeated with a small chuckle. “Is there conflicting evidence on the matter?”

“No, nothing like that,” Dorian pondered in a small voice. “It’s just… I haven't quite figured out what it means, to be in a relationship with one of the most powerful men in the world. I can’t escape the feeling that I have some role to play, some sort of responsibility. _Hopefully_ not sacrificing myself so he won’t have to choose between saving me and all of the Thedas… that would be terribly cliché,” he pointed out with a dramatic roll of his eyes before turning serious again. “But still I just… I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to _do,”_ he confessed.

“Well… if I might,” Nora offered, sitting up a little straighter, and Dorian nodded vigorously for her to proceed, mouth full of soup. “I think what an Inquisitor needs in a romantic partner, is someone they can be themselves around. Being the Inquisitor is exhausting. And it can help to have someone whose presence…”

She smiled, caught up in fond memories of Cullen. _Fingers twining together in the heat of the roaring fire, a thumb brushing across a blushing cheek, honey-brown eyes that almost sparkle like gold as they reflect the dancing flames._ _Safe and solid, protecting and proud._ _He feels like quiet, stronger when you hold him._ _  
_

“...makes all the titles and ranks and power melt away. And suddenly you’re just a regular person, who can talk to them about your fears and doubts, and frustrations. You have someone you can be weak around, and they’re not going to judge you. Someone who will help you find yourself when you’re feeling lost.”

Dorian seemed a bit overwhelmed by all of that, so she concluded with something simple. “And hugs,” she added. “Hugs are nice.”

Dorian gave her a doubtful look. “Hugs.”

“Mmhm.”

 _“Hugs,”_ he repeated, leaning in a little as if to press the truth out of her because surely _not hugs!_

“Maybe work your way up to hugs,” she suggested. “In the meantime, it’ll suffice for you to be a good listener.”

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Dorian asked with a smile, and Nora scrunched up her mouth at the joke and playfully shoved him, jostling both of their bowls of stew. The Tevinter just laughed brightly at her though, and she found herself laughing soon, too.

“You know,” Dorian said once they had quieted down. “I didn’t have any siblings. I’ve quite enjoyed living vicariously through the two of you and all of your play fights. Like two little kittens chewing on each other's ears.”

“Well,” she replied, setting her bowl down to focus on picking at a biscuit. “You’re like a brother to me, Dorian.”

Once again she could see the reaction out of her peripheral vision, a sharp blink and then a widening of Dorian’s eyes. “Me?” he breathed.

She nodded solemnly. “Some time ago, in another life,” she explained. “I had lost my brother. After saying some things I regretted. And I had a dear friend, who was having trouble with his father, who said some things he _should_ have regretted but didn't.” Dorian snorted beside her at the overt reference to himself. “So we decided to be each other’s family,” she said, looking up at him finally.

Dorian’s brows stitched together, looking touched and hurt and lost and found, all at the same time. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something in response before Cassandra’s boots came clunking over to them, standing just close enough to ruin the moment.

“We should get ready,” the Seeker said, and Nora just exchanged regretful glances with Dorian before pocketing her biscuit and rising from her tree log of a chair.

“Right. Gather ‘round,” she called, loud enough so that Iron Bull could hear from where he was sharpening his axe a few yards away. She took the staff off her back and began to draw in the dirt as the three companions made a circle around the image.

“So. The valley is shaped like this. There’s a tunnel here we can use as a choke point.”

“Choke point?” Cassandra inquired.

“There are dragonlings in this area here. The big one will likely be flying overhead, shooting fire. Keep one eye on the sky, if you see a big ball of fire coming toward you, dodge it.”

“Sweet _Maker,”_ Dorian muttered.

“We’ll need to kite all the dragonlings to here, where we can be out of the big one’s line of sight while we dispatch them,” Nora explained.

“Then the big one?” Iron Bull guessed excitedly.

“Then the big one,” Nora smiled at him. “Cassandra will take point, staying near the head and keeping it distracted from the rest of us. Iron Bull.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I want you to focus on its hind legs. Cut hard, and deep. Cripple it. And do what you can to fuck up the wings as well.”

“You got it,” the Qunari answered.

“But not too much because the webbing is valuable. Dorian.”

“Yes.” Dorian, on the other hand, was less excited. Nora detected the slightest tremor in his voice, and watched as he swallowed thickly.

“You and I will need to keep our distance,” she instructed him. “Stick to frost and spirit spells. I might run in at certain points, you’ll want to follow.”

“Alright?” the Tevinter almost croaked.

“Make sure you stay off to the side, facing its flank.”

“Got it.”

“Dorian, if there’s one thing you remember out of all of this, remember this. Fighting a dragon, is like a dance.”

“Like a dance,” Dorian repeated, nodding mechanically.

“When the dragon moves, you have to move, too. I don’t want to see you trying to take this thing head on.”

Dorian let out a haughty, but nervous laugh. “I really don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”

Nora answered that with a knowing look. “Just remember. Alright, any questions? Final thoughts? Cassandra?”

“The shrieking,” the Seeker answered. “It can be quite... debilitating.”

“Ah, yes,” Nora shifted, leaning on her staff to address the three of them. “I have a spell for that. If I can get it off in time. If not, it _will_ be really disorienting and you’ll pretty much be deaf for half the fight. So pray to whatever deity you believe in that I do.” She stood there for only a few more of her heavy heartbeats, knowing it was now or never. “Alright, let’s go,” she said, and walked past Dorian and the Bull and into the tunnel that would lead to the dragon’s lair.

They had barely gotten to the end of the tunnel, the four of them sticking to the inside wall so as not to be seen, when their earlier conversation finally caught up with Dorian.

“Hold on,” he whispered loudly. “Did you have someone? Before?”

Nora shut her eyes tight, mentally kicking herself as she sighed an agitated sigh.

“Ohhhhh _shit,”_ rumbled Bull, helpfully observant as always. “It’s Cullen, isn’t it?”

She could see Dorian’s eyebrows shoot up even in the dark. “Then why are you throwing yourself at mythical reptiles instead of him?” he hissed at her.

“Because he's too busy, you know, commanding an army?” Nora groaned.

“So, what, you decided to drown your loneliness in dragon’s blood?” Dorian scolded. “A cheap bottle of wine would have sufficed. And we have plenty of those back at Skyhold.”

She opened her eyes as wide as she could, silently scolding him back. _“The dragon. Is right. There,”_ she reminded him through gritted teeth.

 _“Seriously,”_ Cassandra whispered on her other side. “We are not having this argument here.”

“Who’s arguing? I’m not arguing,” Dorian continued. “She’s not arguing, she knows that I’m right.”

“Okay, just Shut. _Up,”_ Nora snapped at him, then immediately felt bad and changed her tactic. “I’m sorry. I promised Cullen I would do this. So we’re doing it. We’ve done it before. It’ll be fine.”

“I was told I’d get to hit things,” the Iron Bull interjected, sounding a bit mopey.

That shut everyone up. Nora turned to the Seeker. “Cassandra. Whenever you’re ready.”

Cassandra nodded and with a gallant cry, rushed into the daylight and grabbed the attention of the dragonling nearby. The wings of the high dragon began to move, causing the air around them to rattle and vibrate as they scrambled through the uneven terrain, warriors in front, mages behind. A crowd of the creatures was quickly forming behind them, no doubt chasing after the crazy woman with the shield.

“He’s an idiot, anyway,” Dorian said beside her, between breaths. She glanced over at him, brow furrowed, unsure of what he meant. “For inadvertently rejecting you.”

She just snorted at him as she shot a volley of magic from her staff, her muscles shaking with adrenaline from both efforts.

“What?” he laughed, casting an ice mine under the brood that had formed around Cassandra. “That's what a brother would say isn't it?”

She felt her insides turn to gooey, sentimental mush even amidst all the fighting and danger, throat swelling a bit with the slight urge to cry. “Thanks, Dorian,” she rasped, and then quickly got her spirit blade out to deflect an incoming fireball.

“You’re one, too, though,” she heard the other mage add as they ran further into the field. “So you deserve each other.”

Hardly concentrating on pulling the magic necessary for an effortlessly lethal chain lightning, Nora couldn’t help the pleased and secret smile that twisted itself onto her face.

Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be alright after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is on hiatus as of 6/12/2015


End file.
